US government IT contractor admits spying for Ethiopia

WASHINGTON: A former information technology administrator for the US federal government who had Top Secret security clearance pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to commit espionage for the Ethiopian government.

Abraham Teklu Lemma, a naturalised American citizen of Ethiopian descent, worked as an IT subcontractor at the State Department and Department of Justice before he was arrested in August 2023. He initially pleaded not guilty.

But on Tuesday Lemma pleaded guilty to disclosing national defence information to a foreign government before a federal judge in Washington. He is slated to be sentenced April 14, and faces 120 to 262 months in prison.

"Lemma betrayed the United States to an extraordinary degree," Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg said in a statement Tuesday.

"He exploited his IT administrator access to remove classified national defence information, including Top Secret information, from a secure facility and transmitted it to Ethiopian government officials hoping they would use it to target and kill paramilitary fighters in a regional conflict," Eisenberg added.

Justice officials said Lemma conspired to provide senior Ethiopian government officials with "dozens of highly classified documents, notes, materials and photographs," from 2021 until his 2023 arrest.

US officials did not specify the conflict, but the timeline of Lemma's acts corresponds with the period of heightened hostilities in northern Ethiopia between the central government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) broke out in 2020.

A peace agreement was reached in November 2022, silencing guns for some time, but ongoing tensions gave way to fighting in September 2026.

Federal prosecutors said Lemma encouraged Ethiopian leaders to "take direct action against paramilitary groups who were fighting the government," telling one conspirator, "We have to finish these people once and for all, otherwise there will never be peace in Ethiopia."

The TPLF was once widely respected in Tigray after toppling Ethiopia's military-Marxist Derg regime in 1991 and ruling until 2018.

But the party now faces backlash from former supporters after its efforts to overthrow Ethiopia's federal government was quickly repelled by pro-government forces using drones in September.

Last month, federal authorities formally took control of Tigray and promised to organise elections.