A Sydney magistrate ruled on Friday that former U.S. Marine Corps pilot Daniel Duggan can be extradited from Australia to face charges in the United States for training Chinese military pilots for aircraft carrier landings.
Duggan, 55, a naturalized Australian citizen, is facing U.S. charges of money laundering and violating arms control laws for training Chinese military pilots to land on aircraft carriers. He denies the charges.
He has 15 days to seek a review of the magistrate’s decision.
The extradition decision is ultimately made by Australia’s Attorney General.
Outside court, his wife, Saffrin, said the family plans to appeal to Attorney General Mark Dreyfus to block extradition.
One of the seven co-conspirators named in the U.S. indictment is convicted Chinese hacker Su Bin, but Duggan’s lawyers say he has no connection to the hacking incident.
Duggan was arrested by the Australian Federal Police in rural New South Wales in October 2022, shortly after returning from China, where he had been living since 2014.
The same week, Britain warned its former defence officials not to train People’s Liberation Army pilots at South African flying school, where Duggan also worked.
Duggan, whose wife and six children are also Australian, has been held in a maximum security prison since his arrest.
On Friday, Saffrin placed her hand against the glass window of the defendant’s box where Duggan was sitting in the courtroom.
Judge Daniel Rice said the conditions for extradition had been met. “Mr Duggan is entitled to extradition,” he said.
Mr Duggan’s legal team has previously argued there was no evidence the Chinese pilots he trained were military personnel and that he became an Australian citizen in January 2012, before the alleged crimes.
The U.S. government claims that Duggan lost his U.S. citizenship in 2016 when he signed documents renouncing his citizenship at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
