US contractor admits passing US top-secret information to Ethiopia in its war against rebels

HAMBURG, Germany (AP) — A former U.S. government contractor has admitted passing classified intelligence to Ethiopia that officials used in military operations, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday.

Abraham Teklu Lemma, 54, supplied secrets to senior Ethiopian officials for more than two years urging them to deploy drones against fighters battling the government, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington.

Lemma, of Silver Spring, Maryland, pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to transmit national defense information to a foreign government. He worked as an information technology contractor at the State Department, Justice Department and National Reconnaissance Office, prosecutors said.

According to prosecutors, the information reached Ethiopia’s military and intelligence branches between 2021 and August 2023, when he was arrested.

Prosecutors described a December 2021 message in which Lemma pressed an Ethiopian contact to act against their government opponents.

“We have to finish these people once and for all, otherwise there will never be peace in Ethiopia,” he wrote, according to the Washington prosecutor’s office.

The Ethiopian government has not released any public statements on the case.

An FBI counterintelligence official, Roman Rozhavsky, said Lemma admitted that Ethiopian officials used the intelligence he supplied in military operations. The Justice Department statement did not publicly reveal the specific operations or say whether anyone was killed as a result of the intelligence breach.

An FBI affidavit filed in 2023 alleged that Lemma sent top-secret satellite imagery and classified reports through an encrypted messaging application to Ethiopian government operatives.

The disclosures began during Ethiopia’s 2020–2022 war between federal forces and Tigrayan fighters. Researchers at Belgium’s Ghent University estimated that 500,000 civilians died through violence, famine and the collapse of health services.

The Pretoria peace agreement ended that war, but fighting resumed in September. Government-allied fighters entered Mekelle, Tigray’s capital, on Oct. 4, after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front withdrew.

The U.S. statements did not name any of the armed groups that the Ethiopian government targeted with Lemma’s intelligence.

His plea agreement with U.S. federal prosecutors provides for a prison term of between 10 years and 21 years and 10 months, subject to the court accepting. Lemma is due to be sentenced on April 14, 2027, the Justice Department said.