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Daniel Duggan, a former US Marine pilot, trained Chinese pilots in landing planes on aircraft carriers. Photo/
SYDNEY – A former US Marine pilot, Daniel Duggan, 55, was arrested by security authorities Australia for being involved in espionage. He trains Chinese military pilots to land on aircraft carriers and unknowingly works with a Chinese hacker.
“Daniel Duggan, 55, a naturalized Australian citizen, is concerned that requests for sensitive information from Western intelligence agencies will endanger his family,” lawyers said in a legal filing seen by .
The lawyer’s filing supports a report linking Duggan to convicted Chinese defense hacker Su Bin.
Duggan denies accusations that he violated US gun control laws. He has been in Australia’s maximum security prison since his arrest in 2022 after returning from six years working in Beijing.
“US authorities discovered correspondence with Duggan on electronic devices seized from Su Bin,” Duggan’s lawyer, Bernard Collaery, said in a submission in March to Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfus, who will decide whether to hand Duggan over to the US after a judge hears the case Duggan extradition.
The case will be heard in a Sydney court this month, two years after his arrest in rural Australia at a time when Britain was warning its former military pilots not to work in China.
Su Bin, who was arrested in Canada in 2014, pleaded guilty in 2016 to stealing US military aircraft designs by hacking a major US defense contractor. He was listed among seven co-conspirators with Duggan in the extradition request.
Duggan knew Su Bin as a job broker for Chinese state airline AVIC, Collaery’s lawyers wrote, and the hacking case was “completely unrelated to our client.”
