Dennis Miralis, defence lawyer for former US fighter pilot Daniel Edmund Duggan, in November 2022. Photo: MUHAMMAD FAROOQ /AFP
Former US Marine Corps pilot Daniel Duggan was "singled out" for extradition to the United States to face charges of training Chinese military fliers, even though other Australians provided military services to foreign states, Duggan's lawyer says.
Australia's attorney-general last month accepted an extradition request from Washington for Duggan, who was arrested in rural Australia in October. Duggan was still in custody in Sydney, with his next court date scheduled for 13 February.
Duggan was accused of training Chinese pilots to land on aircraft carriers, and faced charges of money laundering and breaking US arms control laws in the United States, according to a 2017 indictment unsealed in December.
He was arrested the same week Britain announced a crackdown on former military pilots training Chinese fliers.
Duggan's lawyer Dennis Miralis said outside a Sydney court on Tuesday that Duggan "contests and denies" the US allegations, and intended to contest the extradition request.
"He has clearly, in our view, been singled out in circumstances where the Department of Defence has admitted that it has known of many Australian citizens who have performed foreign services in other jurisdictions with foreign states of a military nature," he told reporters.
The defence minister's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Australia launched a review into the obligations former Defence Force personnel had to protect state secrets, after reports Australians were among Western military pilots who had been approached to help train the Chinese military.
Duggan was arrested in rural Australia in October after returning from China, where he had lived since 2014.
He became an Australian citizen after serving in the Marines for 12 years, and later renounced his US citizenship.
The final decision to surrender Duggan would be made by the attorney-general after the court decided whether he was eligible to be extradited, Miralis said.
-Reuters
