By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia’s Lawyer-Common Mark Dreyfus mentioned on Monday he had accredited a United States extradition request for former U.S. Marines pilot Daniel Duggan, who faces costs together with breaking U.S. arms management regulation by coaching Chinese language navy pilots to land on plane carriers.
Duggan, 55, a naturalised Australian citizen, was arrested by Australian Federal Police in a rural city in New South Wales state in October 2022, shortly after getting back from China, the place he had lived since 2014.
Duggan’s attorneys have argued in court docket there isn’t any proof the Chinese language pilots he skilled had been navy, and he was now not a U.S. citizen on the time of the alleged offences. He renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2016 on the U.S. embassy in Beijing, backdated to 2012 on a certificates, they mentioned.
Dreyfus mentioned he had decided Duggan ought to be extradited to the US to face prosecution, after a New South Wales Justice of the Peace in Might discovered him eligible for give up.
“Mr Duggan was given the opportunity to provide representations as to why he should not be surrendered to the United States. In arriving at my decision, I took into consideration all material in front of me,” Dreyfus mentioned in an announcement.
Duggan, who has six youngsters in Australia and has been held in jail since his arrest, was not obtainable for remark.
Duggan’s household was “devastated” by the choice, after receiving a letter from the federal government saying he shall be extradited between December 30 and February 17, his spouse Saffrine mentioned in an announcement.
“The family and Dan’s lawyers are now considering their legal options, including requesting specific reasons for the government’s decision,” the assertion mentioned.
The allegations centre round a flying faculty in South Africa the place Duggan labored half time as a flying teacher greater than 12 years in the past, the assertion mentioned.
“Dan maintains his innocence and denies the allegations made against him, which were not considered a crime in Australia,” it added.
An indictment unsealed by the District of Columbia court docket confirmed Duggan faces 4 costs, and alleges he travelled between Australia, the U.S., China and South Africa between 2009 and 2012, when he was contracted by a Chinese language nationwide to offer companies to a Chinese language state owned firm, together with evaluations of Chinese language navy pilot trainees and instruction on touchdown on plane carriers.
U.S. authorities discovered correspondence with Duggan on digital gadgets seized from Chinese language hacker Su Bin, who Duggan knew as an employment dealer for Chinese language state aviation firm AVIC, his attorneys beforehand mentioned.
Convicted hacker Su Bin is one in all seven co-conspirators within the U.S. indictment, though Duggan’s attorneys argue the hacking case is unrelated.
Duggan’s arrest got here the identical week Britain warned dozens of former navy pilots to cease working for China or face prosecution.
Australia toughened legal guidelines stopping former defence employees from coaching “certain foreign militaries” in response to the case and an investigation into one other pilot who labored on the South African flying faculty.
