US Contractor Passes Top Secret Info.  11/04 06:44

   

   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.