Former US Contractor Pleads Guilty to Passing Secrets to Ethiopian Officials and Urging Them to “Please Send Dro[nes],” Justice Department Says

Former US Contractor Pleads Guilty to Passing Secrets to Ethiopian Officials and Urging Them to “Please Send Dro[nes],” Justice Department Says

November 4, 2026

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The FBI Washington Field Office announced the guilty plea of Abraham Teklu Lemma on Nov. 3, 2026. Image: FBI Washington Field Office

A former US government contractor has pleaded guilty to conspiring to pass classified American intelligence to senior officials of the Ethiopian Government, including information he hoped would help them target and kill fighters in the war in Tigray, the US Justice Department and the BBC reported.

Abraham Teklu Lemma, a Maryland resident who worked as an information technology contractor at the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency responsible for US intelligence satellites, and at the State and Justice departments, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiring to transmit national defense information to a foreign government, the Justice Department said. From 2021 until his arrest in August 2023, he conspired with senior Ethiopian officials to collect and send them “dozens of highly classified documents, notes, materials, and photographs,” some classified up to the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information level, and the people he worked with included “senior officials within political, military, and intelligence branches of the Ethiopian government,” the department said. It did not name them. Under his plea agreement, Abraham has agreed to a prison term of between 120 and 262 months, or 10 to almost 22 years, if the court accepts it, and sentencing is set for April 14, 2027.

Much of the information he shared “concerned an armed conflict in Ethiopia,” the department said, without naming the conflict. The material included satellite imagery and details of military activities, which he passed to Ethiopian officials through encrypted messages, BBC reported, and BBC said he had hoped the information would help target and kill fighters from Tigray during the 2020 to 2022 war. “By his own admission, Lemma provided classified national defense information to Ethiopian officials, who then used it in military operations during an ongoing conflict,” said Roman Rozhavsky, an assistant director in the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division. The public statements do not say which operations used the information, and they do not link it to any particular drone strike or to any deaths, the Amharic news site Ethiopique noted.

The department said that on some occasions Abraham “encouraged his Ethiopian government conspirators to take direct action against paramilitary groups who were fighting the government of Ethiopia.” On Dec. 18, 2021, he told one of them, “We have to finish these people once and for all, otherwise there will never be peace in Ethiopia,” and later the same day he shared more information and wrote, “Please send Dro[nes],” according to the department. John Eisenberg, the assistant attorney general for national security, said Abraham had passed the material to Ethiopian officials “hoping they would use it to target and kill paramilitary fighters in a regional conflict.”

To hide what he was doing, Abraham wrote classified information down by hand and carried the notes out of secure government buildings, and he used his access as an IT administrator to pull electronic copies from classified US government systems and take them out as well, the department said. When he was arrested in 2023, prosecutors alleged that he had removed security markings from intelligence reports, and in one exchange, when a foreign intelligence official asked him to keep helping, he replied, “Roger that!”, BBC said. He was born in Ethiopia and is a US citizen, BBC Amharic and BBC Tigrinya reported.

The Ethiopian Government has said nothing publicly about the charges against him, BBC Amharic reported, and BBC said it had asked the Ethiopian authorities for comment. Zegabi found no public statement from the Office of the Prime Minister, the Government Communication Service or the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington by Wednesday morning.

The war in Tigray, which began six years ago today, killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions and was marked by widespread allegations of atrocities, including massacres, sexual violence and attacks on civilians, BBC said. A peace agreement signed in November 2022 ended it, but fighting resumed in September after both sides accused each other of breaking the deal. Drone strikes are again being reported. Witnesses told BBC and AFP that a drone strike killed at least 12 people gathering spilled grain in Tigray’s Rama last month, and residents and a hospital source told BBC that a drone strike on a camp for displaced people in South Wollo killed 18.

Reaction on X came quickly after the department’s announcement on Tuesday afternoon. Jonah Wedekind (@jowedekind), a Berlin based research consultant who writes about the state in Ethiopia, according to his bio, wrote that Abraham “pleaded guilty to sharing highly classified intel with the Ethiopian gov during the Tigray war” and quoted both messages. The account Finan67 (@Finan67), which describes itself as “a Tigraian with opinions on Tigrai,” wrote, “That is the genocide in one sentence, written by one of its servants and now sitting in a U.S. court file. He didn’t say TPLF. He said PEOPLE,” and added, “The man who asked for the drones faces 10 to 22 years in prison. The man who sent them is still in office.” The Justice Department’s statement describes the targets of the messages as “paramilitary groups who were fighting the government.” Teweldeberhan (@TeweldeMedhen), whose bio reads “Unapologetically ትግራዋይ” (Tigrayan), wrote that “in addition to treason, he must be tried for collaborating with foreign actors to commit genocide.” The account Betegbar (@Freedom44225) wrote in Amharic, “The man who was spying for Abiy’s government faces up to 21 years and 10 months in prison!” and added, “The day is not far when all those who, from bases outside the country, contributed to the loss of many innocent lives by supporting and helping Abiy’s mercenary group will face the law, each according to his part in the crime!” The Arabic language Africa news platform Ain Africa (@AinAfrica) led its post with “‘Please send the drones’: a US government contractor admits spying for Ethiopia.” Zegabi found no posts in Tigrigna about the case.

Sources