By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia's Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said on Monday he had approved a United States extradition request for former U.S. Marines pilot Daniel Duggan, who faces charges including breaking U.S. arms control law by training Chinese military pilots to land on aircraft carriers.
Duggan, 55, a naturalised Australian citizen, was arrested by Australian Federal Police in a rural town in New South Wales state in October 2022, shortly after returning from China, where he had lived since 2014.
Duggan's lawyers have argued in court there is no evidence the Chinese pilots he trained were military, and he was no longer a U.S. citizen at the time of the alleged offences. He renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2016 at the U.S. embassy in Beijing, backdated to 2012 on a certificate, they said.
Dreyfus said he had determined Duggan should be extradited to the United States to face prosecution, after a New South Wales magistrate in May found him eligible for surrender.
"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 said in a statement.
Duggan, who has six children in Australia and has been held in prison since his arrest, was not available for comment.
Duggan's family was "devastated" by the decision, after receiving a letter from the government saying he will be extradited between December 30 and February 17, his wife Saffrine said in a statement.
"The family and Dan's lawyers are now considering their legal options, including requesting specific reasons for the government’s decision," the statement said.
The allegations centre around a flying school in South Africa where Duggan worked part time as a flying instructor more than 12 years ago, the statement said.
"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 showed Duggan faces four charges, and alleges he travelled between Australia, the U.S., China and South Africa between 2009 and 2012, when he was contracted by a Chinese national to provide services to a Chinese state owned company, including evaluations of Chinese military pilot trainees and instruction on landing on aircraft carriers.
U.S. authorities found correspondence with Duggan on electronic devices seized from Chinese hacker Su Bin, who Duggan knew as an employment broker for Chinese state aviation company AVIC, his lawyers previously said.
Convicted hacker Su Bin is one of seven co-conspirators in the U.S. indictment, although Duggan's lawyers argue the hacking case is unrelated.
Duggan's arrest came the same week Britain warned dozens of former military pilots to stop working for China or face prosecution.
Australia toughened laws stopping former defence staff from training "certain foreign militaries" in response to the case and an investigation into another pilot who worked at the South African flying school.