US contractor gave Ethiopia secrets to help kill Tigray fighters
The Ethiopian-born American citizen admitted sharing dozens of classified documents with senior Ethiopian officials.
An Ethiopian-born American citizen has pleaded guilty to passing highly classified intelligence to Ethiopia, including information he hoped would help target and kill fighters from the Tigray region during the country's 2020-22 civil war.
Abraham Teklu Lemma, a former US contractor, admitted sharing dozens of classified documents and photographs with senior Ethiopian officials over more than two years, the US Department of Justice said.
"In doing so, he betrayed his oath, his colleagues, and his country, while jeopardizing our national security," said US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Ferris Pirro.
In one message to an Ethiopian official in December 2021, he wrote: "We have to finish these people once and for all, otherwise there will never be peace in Ethiopia," court papers showed.