WASHINGTON — A contractor for the U.S. government has been arrested on espionage charges, accused of providing a foreign country classified information that he downloaded and printed from his work computer system, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Abraham Teklu Lemma, who is originally from Ethiopia, had a top secret security clearance and access to classified information through contracting positions with the departments of State and Justice.
He is accused of using an encrypted messaging application to transmit maps, photographs and satellite imagery to the foreign government, according to court documents.
Court papers do not identify the country Lemma is accused of spying for, and a Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. But the documents do refer to travel back and forth over the past year and a half to a country where he has family ties.
The New York Times, which first reported the arrest, identified Ethiopia as the country for which Lemma is alleged to have spied.
Prosecutors say he accessed dozens of intelligence reports, copying information from them and downloading it to CDs and DVDs.
Lemma faces charges of delivering national defense information to aid a foreign government and conspiring to do so, as well as the willful retention of national defense information. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf.
Lemma, 50, of Silver Spring, Maryland, is a naturalized…
