The Central Revolutionary Investigation Department or CRID (

Amharic Amharic is an Ethio-Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amhara people, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other metropolitan populati ...

: ማዕከላዊ አብዮታዊ ምርመራ መምሪያ) was the

secret police image:Putin-Stasi-Ausweis.png, 300px, Vladimir Putin's secret police identity card, issued by the East German Stasi while he was working as a Soviet KGB liaison officer from 1985 to 1989. Both organizations used similar forms of repression. Secre ...

and internal intelligence service in

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

during the rule of the

Derg The Derg or Dergue (, ), officially the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), was the military junta that ruled Ethiopia, including present-day Eritrea, from 1974 to 1987, when they formally "Civil government, civilianized" the ...

, a

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

military junta A military junta () is a system of government led by a committee of military leaders. The term ''Junta (governing body), junta'' means "meeting" or "committee" and originated in the Junta (Peninsular War), national and local junta organized by t ...

, and later in

People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia The People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE; ) was a socialist state that existed in Ethiopia and present-day Eritrea from 1987 to 1991. The PDRE was established in February 1987 as a Marxism-Leninism, Marxist-Leninist one-party state upo ...

, from 1978 until 1991. Ethiopian army soldiers huge rally in support of the Derg military junta

The Derg seized power in Ethiopia in 1974 amid a general revolution against Emperor

Haile Selassie Haile Selassie I (born Tafari Makonnen or ''Ethiopian aristocratic and court titles#Lij, Lij'' Tafari; 23 July 189227 August 1975) was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He rose to power as the Ethiopian aristocratic and court titles, Rege ...

. The military junta immediately began to purge the state of the emperor's supporters and political opponents and formed a new secret police and

intelligence service An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objectives. Means of info ...

(

intelligence agency An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, Intelligence analysis, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy obj ...

firstly named "Committee for peoples Security and Peace"). Soon, the Derg regime carried out a bloody military campaign to suppress its opponents, known as the Qey Shibir or

Red Terror The Red Terror () was a campaign of political repression and Mass killing, executions in Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Russia which was carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police ...

, which killed an estimated 980,000 people in less than two years. If Red Terror was stopped in 1978, however, repressions was not: in August of the same year CRID was founded. CRID was responsible for suppressing dissent and identifying targets for state repression in Ethiopia. Department also has been monitoring opposition in government-controlled areas and regime dissidents. It is considered to be the most advanced institution of violence in Derg's Ethiopia. CRID also known as the "third police station". The CRID was disbanded in May-June 1991 following the fall of the Derg regime because of a series of offensives by a coalition of opposition forces.

References

Secret police History of Ethiopia (1974–present) 1978 establishments in Ethiopia 1991 disestablishments in Ethiopia Derg {{Ethiopia-gov-stub