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The US Department of Justice announced that Abraham Teklu Lemma, a 53-year-old naturalized American citizen of Ethiopian descent from Silver Spring, Maryland, entered the guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to transmit national defense information to a foreign government. Lemma worked as an information technology contractor for the State Department, the Justice Department and the National Reconnaissance Office while holding a Top Secret security clearance that gave him access to sensitive compartmented information. Court documents show he conspired with senior figures across Ethiopia’s political, military and intelligence establishments from 2021 until his arrest in August 2023, transmitting dozens of highly classified documents, notes, photographs and other materials.
Prosecutors stated that much of the information concerned the armed conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, where Lemma hoped it would be used to target paramilitary fighters opposing government forces. He removed classification markings from some documents, copied materials onto CDs and DVDs, took handwritten notes out of secure facilities and used encrypted messaging applications to share the intelligence. The Justice Department said Lemma exploited his administrator privileges to extract electronic files without authorization while taking steps to conceal his activities from colleagues.
In one exchange detailed in court papers from December 2021, Lemma told an Ethiopian contact “We have to finish these people once and for all, otherwise there will never be peace in Ethiopia.” Later the same day he shared additional intelligence and urged action by writing “Please send drones,” according to the documents. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg said Lemma betrayed the United States to an extraordinary degree by hoping the material would help officials kill fighters in the regional conflict.
US Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro noted that the former contractor had violated his oath and jeopardized national security, adding that the guilty plea demonstrates accountability for those who compromise sensitive secrets. The case first came to light in September 2023 when the Justice Department unsealed charges against Lemma following an internal State Department security review prompted by separate leaks elsewhere in the government, a Reuters report from that period indicated. Federal investigators found he had accessed more than 100 intelligence reports, the majority focused on Ethiopia and neighboring areas.
The activities overlapped with Ethiopia’s war in Tigray that began in November 2020 when federal forces, allied with Eritrean troops, moved against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, according to an Associated Press account of the conflict. The fighting produced a near-total communications blackout across the region, making satellite imagery particularly valuable for tracking military movements before a peace agreement was signed in November 2022. The Associated Press reported that hundreds of thousands of people were killed during the two-year war, with United Nations-backed experts continuing to describe the humanitarian and security situation as extremely grave because of the lingering presence of Eritrean fighters.
Sentencing was scheduled for April 14 2027 under a plea agreement that exposes Lemma to a potential term of between 10 and nearly 22 years in prison, the Justice Department said. The investigation was handled by the FBI’s Washington Field Office with prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the National Security Division. Addis Standard, citing the same court records, noted that the espionage unfolded against the backdrop of the Tigray fighting that erupted six years ago this month.
