Abraham Teklu Lemma has admitted conspiring with senior Ethiopian political, military and intelligence officials to pass them top-secret US material between 2021 and 2023, the US Justice Department says. Ethiopia's government has not commented.
A former US government IT contractor, Abraham Teklu Lemma, has pleaded guilty to conspiring to transmit US national defence information to the government of Ethiopia, the US Department of Justice announced on Tuesday 3 November. Lemma, from Maryland, worked as a contractor at the National Reconnaissance Office, the State Department and the Justice Department. He has agreed to a prison term of between 120 and 262 months, and sentencing is set for 14 April 2027.
According to court documents cited by the department, Lemma held a Top Secret clearance. From 2021 until his arrest in August 2023, he conspired with senior Ethiopian government officials to collect and pass on dozens of classified documents, notes, materials and photographs, some classified up to Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information. The department said his co-conspirators included "senior officials within political, military, and intelligence branches of the Ethiopian government". It said much of the information "concerned an armed conflict in Ethiopia".
"Please send Dro[nes]"
Prosecutors say Lemma copied classified information into handwritten notes and carried them out of secure facilities. They say he also used his IT administrator access to remove electronic files. According to the department, he sometimes urged his Ethiopian contacts to act against "paramilitary groups who were fighting the government of Ethiopia". On 18 December 2021, he told one of them: "We have to finish these people once and for all, otherwise there will never be peace in Ethiopia." Later that day, he shared more information and wrote: "Please send Dro[nes]."
"Lemma betrayed the United States to an extraordinary degree," said John A. Eisenberg, the assistant attorney general for national security. Eisenberg said Lemma had passed the material to Ethiopian officials "hoping they would use it to target and kill paramilitary fighters in a regional conflict". The FBI's Roman Rozhavsky said that, by Lemma's own admission, Ethiopian officials "used it in military operations during an ongoing conflict".
Context
The Justice Department did not name the conflict or the armed groups. The BBC reported that the information was intended to help target fighters from the Tigray region during the 2020–22 civil war. The BBC said the material included satellite imagery and details of military activity, passed on through encrypted messages. That war, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, ended with the Pretoria agreement in November 2022. Fighting resumed in September 2026, with each side accusing the other of breaching the deal.
The BBC said it had contacted the Ethiopian authorities for comment. In the reports reviewed, CERHA found no response from Addis Ababa or from the Tigrayan leadership by the time of publication. The plea agreement still has to be accepted by the court.
Image: The Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building in Washington, DC, 2026. APK, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.