At a February 1977 meeting between Mengistu and his opponents, that included not only Mogus but chairman General Tafari Benti and a number of leading members of the Derg, military soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Asfaw rounded up and arrested him along with other Derg members suspected of conspiring with EPRP. They were summarily executed after a short while. Mengistu afterwards broadcast on Radio Ethiopia that Mogus and his dead compatriots had attempted a "fascist coup d'etat in the capital identical to what had taken place in Chile", and labeling them "fifth columnists" of the Ethiopian Democratic Union and Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party rebel groups.