US Marine Pilot Arrested in Australia Collaborated with Chinese Hacker, Lawyer Says India News

NEW DELHI: Daniel Duggan, a 55-year-old former US Navy pilot and naturalized Australian citizen, is currently fighting extradition from Australia to the United States for training Chinese military pilots to land on aircraft carriers. According to his lawyer, Bernard Collaery, Duggan unknowingly worked with a Chinese hacker named Su Bin, who was convicted of stealing U.S. military aircraft designs by hacking major U.S. defense contractors.

Duggan denies allegations that he violated US arms control laws and has been held in an Australian high-security prison since his arrest in 2022 after returning from a six-year work stint in Beijing.

Collaery’s legal filings seen by Reuters show that U.S. authorities discovered correspondence between Duggan and Su Bin on electronic devices seized from the latter. Duggan knew Su Bin as a labor broker for Chinese state-owned aviation company AVIC, which was blacklisted by the U.S. last year because of its ties to the Chinese military.

Messages retrieved from Su Bin’s devices show that he paid for Duggan’s trip from Australia to Beijing in May 2012 and that Duggan had asked Su Bin for help in sourcing Chinese aircraft parts for his Top Gun tourist airline business in Australia.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) and US Navy detectives were aware of Duggan’s involvement in training pilots for AVIC and met in Tasmania in December 2012 and February 2013. Through legitimate business activities in China, Mr Duggan may be able to to collect sensitive information.”

Duggan moved to China in 2013 and was barred from leaving the country in 2014. He renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2016 at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, backdating it in a certificate to 2012 after “there may have been open intelligence contacts by U.S. authorities that may have been compromised.” his family security.”

Duggan’s 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 crimes took place.

However, the United States government claims that Duggan only lost his US citizenship in 2016. The case is due to be heard in a Sydney court this month, two years after Duggan’s arrest in rural Australia, which coincided with Britain’s warnings to its former military pilots against working for China.