The eldest daughter of a man locked in solitary confinement as he faces extradition to the United States for allegedly sharing military secrets is losing hope that her father will ever be the same.
Daniel Duggan, a 55-year-old former US Marine pilot turned Australian citizen, faces charges in the United States for allegedly training Chinese military pilots in aircraft carrier landings and combat techniques.
The United States claims the father of six may have divulged military secrets while employed at a civilian flight school in South Africa between 2009 and 2012.
It will be another ten years before Duggan is arrested for the alleged crime in October 2022.
His daughter Molly told 60 Minutes she feared the father she knew was shaken after 19 months in solitary confinement at Lithgow Correctional Centre, 150km west of Sydney.
“I probably won’t find my father again,” she told the program.
Molly Duggan (left) doesn’t believe her father, Daniel Duggan (right), will ever be the same after spending more than a year in solitary confinement while facing extradition to the United States.
“He’s been in maximum security for so long. Can you imagine being isolated like that for that long?
“He won’t be the same person he was before they took him away.”
Duggan faces 65 years in prison if convicted of the charges against him in the United States, according to his wife Saffrine.
She and her husband both claim he is completely innocent because he only trained civilian pilots with information available in online manuals while he was in South Africa.
Ms Duggan called on Australia to show toughness and avoid expediting her husband’s death sentence.
“It means my children are losing their father, their family is being torn apart over something that can be stopped,” she said.
“It’s absolutely incredible to think that Australia would do that.”
One thing the family has struggled to accept is Duggan’s harsh imprisonment in solitary confinement, despite having committed no crimes in Australia.
“There are no Australian charges. Dan was a proud military sailor. He’s a proud Australian,” Ms Duggan said.
“He didn’t break any laws. Dan is an innocent man.
“Our truth will win.”
Duggan made his own appeal from behind bars, imploring Australians to rally against his expedition.
“I have asked the Australian people to help us help my family and fight this injustice,” he said.
Saffrine Duggan (photo by 60 Minutes) has rejected US allegations that her husband shared military secrets with China.
Duggan will find out whether he will be sent to the United States to stand trial on May 24.
“We will not give up,” his wife vowed.
“I want to be proud that our Australian government is doing the right thing and bringing Dan home.”
Duggan joined the U.S. Marines in 1990 and flew Harrier jets before leaving the military in 2002.
He then moved to Tasmania where he met and fell in love with Saffrine and ran a business called Top Gun Tasmania.
While running his business, Duggan also took on temporary contracts to train pilots at a flight school in South Africa.
As well as running his business, Mr Duggan also trains pilots in South Africa, where he is accused of sharing US military information.
The family moved to China in 2014, but Ms Duggan says this has nothing to do with the allegations against her husband.
“It was the perfect place, there were a lot of Australians going there. Asia was a real hotspot,” she said.
Mr Duggan (pictured) was a former US Navy pilot and trained civilian pilots in South Africa after leaving the army.
She and their children returned to Australia in 2020, but Duggan, for an unknown reason, had her passport confiscated by the Chinese government.
He was only able to return in September 2022.
On Sunday, it was also reported that Duggan’s lawyer claimed he without knowing it, he worked with a Chinese hacker.
Duggan feared requests for sensitive information from Western intelligence agencies would put his family at risk, the lawyer said in a legal filing seen by Reuters.
The attorney’s filing supports Reuters reporting linking Duggan to convicted Chinese hacker Su Bin.
Duggan denies allegations that he violated US arms control laws. He has been held in a maximum security Australian prison since his arrest in 2022, after returning from six years working in Beijing.
US authorities found correspondence with Duggan on electronic devices seized from Su Bin, Duggan’s lawyer Bernard Collaery said in the March submission to Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, who will decide whether to hand Duggan over to the United States. United after a magistrate hears Duggan’s extradition case.
The case will be heard this month in a Sydney court, 19 months after his arrest in Orange, in central west New South Wales, at a time when Britain was warning its former military pilots to not work for China.
Su Bin, arrested in Canada in 2014, pleaded guilty in 2016 to stealing models of US military aircraft by hacking major US defense contractors. He is listed as one of Duggan’s seven co-conspirators in the extradition request.
Mr Duggan (pictured), who ran Top Gun Tasmania, will find out whether he will be sent to the United States for trial on May 24.
Duggan knew Su Bin as an employment agent for Chinese state airline AVIC, lawyer Collaery wrote, and the hacking case was “totally unrelated to our client.”
Although Su Bin “may have had inappropriate connections with (Chinese) agents, our client did not know this,” Duggan’s lawyer wrote.
AVIC was blacklisted by the United States last year as a company linked to the Chinese military.
Messages recovered from Su Bin’s electronic devices show he paid for Duggan’s trip from Australia to Beijing in May 2012, according to extradition documents filed by the United States with the Australian court.
Duggan asked Su Bin to help him source Chinese aircraft parts for his Top Gun sightseeing flight business in Australia, Collaery wrote.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) and US Navy criminal investigators knew Duggan trained pilots for AVIC and met with him in the Australian state of Tasmania in December 2012 and February 2013, his lawyer wrote.
ASIO and the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on the meetings. ASIO previously said it would not comment as the matter was before the court.
“An ASIO official suggested that while carrying out his legitimate business activities in China, Mr Duggan might be able to collect sensitive information,” his lawyer wrote.
The family of Daniel Duggan (pictured) says the allegations against him are false and have criticized the Australian government for keeping him in maximum security.
Duggan moved to China in 2013 and was barred from leaving the country in 2014, his lawyer said. Duggan’s LinkedIn profile and aviation industry sources who knew him said he worked in China as an aviation consultant in 2013 and 2014.
He renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2016 at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, backdated to 2012 on a certificate, after “clear contact with U.S. authorities that could have compromised the security of his family,” his lawyer wrote .
His lawyers are opposing extradition, arguing there is no evidence the Chinese pilots he trained were military personnel and that he became an Australian citizen in January 2012, before the alleged offenses.
The U.S. government claimed that Duggan only lost his U.S. citizenship in 2016.
dailymail us
