Former US contractor admits passing secrets to Ethiopian officials during Ethiopia’s war


E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse, Washington, DC

The E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, DC, on 31 July 2026 (G. Edward Johnson, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0) [file photo]

WASHINGTON. A former US government contractor from Silver Spring, Maryland, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiring to pass classified American intelligence to senior Ethiopian officials. Federal prosecutors say much of the material concerned the war in Ethiopia, and that he hoped it would be used to target and kill fighters battling the government.

Abraham Teklu Lemma, a naturalized US citizen who previously held Ethiopian citizenship according to court papers, admitted one count of conspiracy to transmit national defense information to a foreign government, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said in a statement. The office gave his age as 54. A separate release from the Justice Department’s national press office gave his age as 53. Mereja Media has not been able to resolve the discrepancy.

Lemma worked as an information technology contractor at the State Department, the Justice Department and the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that runs US spy satellites, and held a Top Secret security clearance, according to the Justice Department.

Under the plea agreement, Lemma has agreed to a prison term of between 120 and 262 months, or 10 years to nearly 22 years, if the court accepts it. Senior Judge John D. Bates of the US District Court for the District of Columbia set sentencing for April 14, 2027. The case number is 24cr573.

According to the Justice Department, from 2021 until his arrest in August 2023, Lemma conspired with senior officials in the political, military and intelligence branches of the Ethiopian government to collect and send them dozens of classified documents, notes, materials and photographs. Some were classified at the Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information level, a label prosecutors said covers material whose unauthorized disclosure could cause “exceptionally grave damage” to US national security.

Prosecutors said Lemma copied classified information by hand into notes that he carried out of secure government buildings. They said he also used his access as an IT administrator to remove electronic copies of classified files from government systems.

The Justice Department quoted a message it said Lemma sent to one of his Ethiopian contacts on December 18, 2021. “We have to finish these people once and for all, otherwise there will never be peace in Ethiopia,” he wrote, according to the department. Later that day, prosecutors said, he sent more information and wrote, “Please send Dro[nes].”

The Justice Department did not name the armed group in its release. The BBC, reporting on the plea, described the targets as fighters from the Tigray region during the war of 2020 to 2022, a conflict fought between federal forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The BBC also reported that the FBI said Ethiopian officials used intelligence Lemma supplied in military operations.

“Lemma betrayed the United States to an extraordinary degree,” said John A. Eisenberg, the Assistant Attorney General for National Security. He said Lemma transmitted the material “hoping they would use it to target and kill paramilitary fighters in a regional conflict.”

US Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said Lemma “betrayed his oath, his colleagues, and his country, while jeopardizing our national security.”

What the 2023 court papers said

Lemma was first charged in a sealed criminal complaint on August 23, 2023, which was unsealed the following month. An FBI affidavit filed with that complaint, now available on the public court archive CourtListener, gave more detail than the plea announcement.

The affidavit said Lemma sent material, including satellite imagery, to an Ethiopian official over an encrypted messaging app. It said he copied or pasted information from at least 85 intelligence reports, most of them about Ethiopia, without a need to know. It also said a government system linked to his work was accessed from an Ethiopian internet address 31 times between April 13 and June 21, 2023, including at times when he was not in Ethiopia.

According to the affidavit, when the official asked him to continue his support, Lemma replied, “Roger that!” In an April 2023 message, he wrote, “I hope we’re using current [Country A] situations for our advantage.” The affidavit described Country A only as a country that shares a border with Ethiopia.

The affidavit also described more than $55,000 in deposits into one of Lemma’s bank accounts between January 2022 and July 2023, and said some cash deposits lined up with trips to Ethiopia and with times he copied reports. The affidavit did not say who provided the money, and the Justice Department’s announcement of the plea did not mention any payment.

Court records show Lemma pleaded not guilty to all counts in January 2025 and has been held in custody. The plea agreement and any statement of facts signed with it were not publicly available on Wednesday. Marc Eisenstein, listed in court records as Lemma’s lawyer, told Mereja Media he no longer represents him and named Sabrina Shroff as his current counsel. Mereja Media asked Shroff for comment on Wednesday night. She declined, writing, “I have no comment and I would not permit a client to comment.”

No word from Addis Ababa

Mereja Media found no public comment on the plea from the Ethiopian government, the office of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, or the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington. Mereja Media asked the Ethiopian Embassy for comment on Wednesday morning and had received no reply by publication. The BBC said it had contacted Ethiopian authorities for comment.

The case is not the first time Ethiopian state activity in the United States has reached a Washington court. In 2017, a federal appeals court dismissed a lawsuit by a Silver Spring man, known in court as Kidane, who said Ethiopia had infected his computer with FinSpy surveillance software. The court ruled that Ethiopia was immune from the suit and did not decide whether the spying took place. Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab separately reported in 2014 and 2015 that an attacker they linked to the Ethiopian government had targeted US based journalists at the diaspora broadcaster ESAT with spyware. Those cases involved surveillance of Ethiopians abroad. The Lemma case, by contrast, concerns the theft of US classified information.

Reaction online

The news drew a wide response on X. The post from the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia announcing the plea had been viewed more than 109,000 times by Wednesday afternoon, and the FBI post about 79,000 times. Mereja Media could not independently verify the claims made in the reactions below.

An account on X, @NatsinetTsibah, shared the December 2021 quote and wrote that Lemma was “calling to finish Tigrains.” Another account on X, @Abagobye91, addressed the prime minister directly, asking who had ordered the spying and who received the intelligence, questions the court papers do not answer. A third account on X, @overthinkergang, wrote that Lemma “will be revered and canonized.”

An account on X, @KirubelHabtema1, claimed the leaking took place “during the TPLF regime” rather than during the Tigray war. That claim conflicts with the dates in the Justice Department’s account, which places the conduct between 2021 and 2023.

The FBI’s Washington Field Office investigated the case. It is being prosecuted by Assistant US Attorneys Tejpal Chawla and Adam P. Barry and Trial Attorney Kathryn DeMarco of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

Sources

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