Australian pilot Daniel Duggan believes he could not get a fair trial in America, where he faces up to 60 years in prison on charges relating to training Chinese pilots.
But Australia’s role in his arrest is also being interrogated: his legal team say they are investigating whether the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) assisted the US by “luring” Duggan back to Australia from China, so that he could be arrested and extradited.
In a statement provided by his family from prison, where he has been held for 151 days, Duggan said: “I reject the allegations against me 1000%. The insinuation that I am some sort of spy is an outrage.
“This case is a test of Australian sovereignty but is being fought by a struggling farming family in regional NSW, at great personal and financial expense.”
Duggan’s case returned to court Monday morning.
Duggan, 54, a former US marine pilot who is now a naturalised Australian, was arrested last October at the request of the US government, which is seeking his extradition on charges of arms trafficking and money laundering, arising from his alleged training of Chinese fighter pilots more than a decade ago. The allegations have not been tested in court.
Duggan, who has no criminal history anywhere in the world, has been refused bail, and has faced extreme isolation in prison, having been classified as a high-risk prisoner. He denies the charges and is fighting his extradition from prison, a process that could take months, even years, to resolve.
Duggan’s legal team has maintained the US extradition request is an arbitrary and politically motivated prosecution, catalysed by the US’s deepening geopolitical contest with China.
At Sydney’s Downing Centre local court on Monday, magistrate Greg Grogin resisted calls from the US government to set a timetable to hear Duggan’s extradition matter, agreeing with Duggan’s legal team that he needed more time to access documents from Australian government agencies, relating to the allegations against him.
“It’s a very important decision. A man’s liberty is at stake here,” Grogin said.
Dennis Miralis, acting for Duggan, said while there had generally been cooperation from Australian government agencies, some had refused to hand over documents, forcing Duggan’s legal team to appeal to the information commissioner to get them.
Outside court, Miralis said he had sought 63 documents that were critical to Duggan understanding Australia’s role in the US indictment against him, and in preparing his defence.
Miralis said he was investigating whether Duggan may have been “lured” back to Australia with the assistance of Australian authorities.
He said Duggan had received security clearance from Asio to receive an aviation licence and return from China to work in Australia in 2022.
The Asio clearance was later rescinded.
“It’s striking to us that a sequence of events like that could occur,” Miralis said.
“We are exploring at this stage whether or not he was lured back to Australia by the US, where the US knew he would be in a jurisdiction where he would be capable of being extradited,” Miralis said.
Such lures, including manipulation of security clearances, are legal under US law, Miralis said, but not Australian law. It would be “a matter of grave significance” if Australian security agencies had given Duggan a security clearance to provide “a false sense that he would be able to return to Australia”.
“We are asking Asio whether they deny that they were involved in a lure at the behest of the Australian government to give him a security clearance with a view to him arriving here in order for him to then be arrested,” Miralis said. “Asio’s responses have been: ‘we can’t confirm or deny’.”
Miralis said Duggan was under “enormous mental … and emotional pressure”, and that 151 days of incarceration – much of it in isolation – had taken a “huge toll” on him.
Miralis said Duggan was deeply worried that, at 54 years old and with six children who are Australian citizens, he was facing a maximum prison term of 60 years. Miralis added that Duggan’s safety could not be assured in a US prison “against a backdrop of the politicisation of this case within the context of the US believing that they are presently, in effect, at war with China”.
A 2017 US grand jury indictment alleges Duggan trained Chinese fighter pilots to land fighter jets on aircraft carriers, in defiance of arms trafficking laws, and engaged in a conspiracy to launder money.
The six-year-old indictment, only unsealed last December, details payments Duggan allegedly received in 2011 and 2012 for his work training Chinese fighter pilots at a test flight academy “based in South Africa, with a presence in the People’s Republic of China”.
He strenuously rejects the charges against him as being politically motivated, and says the indictment against him is filled with “half-truths, falsehoods and gross embellishments”.
