Former U.S. Marine pilot Daniel Duggan is currently fighting extradition from Australia to the United States on charges of training Chinese military pilots to land on aircraft carriers. However, his lawyer has revealed a shocking twist in the case – Duggan unknowingly worked with a Chinese hacker.
According to Duggan’s lawyer, Bernard Collaery, Duggan feared that requests for sensitive information from Western intelligence agencies were putting his family at risk. The lawyer’s filing supports Reuters’ reporting linking Duggan to convicted Chinese defense hacker Su Bin.
Su Bin, who was arrested in Canada in 2014, pleaded guilty in 2016 to stealing U.S. military aircraft designs by hacking major defense contractors. Duggan knew Su Bin as an employment broker for the Chinese state aviation company AVIC, but his lawyer claims that the hacking case was “totally unrelated” to Duggan.
Messages retrieved from Su Bin’s electronic devices show that he paid for Duggan’s travel from Australia to Beijing in 2012. Duggan had asked Su Bin to help source Chinese aircraft parts for his Top Gun tourist flight business in Australia.
Despite the allegations against him, Duggan’s lawyers argue that there is no evidence the Chinese pilots he trained were military, and that he became an Australian citizen before the alleged offenses took place. The United States government, however, contends that Duggan did not lose his U.S. citizenship until 2016.
The case will be heard in a Sydney court this month, two years after Duggan’s arrest in rural Australia. The extradition decision lies with Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfus, who will decide whether to surrender Duggan to the U.S. after the magistrate hears Duggan’s case.