SYDNEY: A former US Marine pilot facing extradition from Australia on charges of training Chinese military pilots to land on aircraft carriers, worked unknowingly with a Chinese hacker Su Bin, his lawyer said on Sunday.
The lawyer in a legal filing said that Daniel Duggan, 55, now an Australian citizen, feared requests by Western intelligence agencies for sensitive data were putting his family at risk.
Duggan denies the accusations that he broke US weapon control laws. He has been in an Australian security prison since his arrest in 2022 after returning from six years of working in China.
Duggan’s lawyer Bernard Collaery in the March submission to Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfus said the US authorities found correspondence with Duggan on electronic devices seized from Su Bin.
A magistrate will hear the case in a Sydney court this month, two years after his arrest.
Su Bin was arrested in Canada in 2014, and found guilty in 2016 for theft of US military aircraft designs by hacking major US defense contractors.
He is among seven co-conspirators along with Duggan in the extradition request.
Duggan knew Su Bin as an employment broker for Chinese state aviation company AVIC, said lawyer Collaery.
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Although Su Bin might have improper connections to some Chinese agents but this was unknown to Duggan, said his lawyer. The US blacklisted AVIC last year as a Chinese military-linked company.
According to extradition documents lodged by the United States with the Australian court, messages retrieved from Su Bin’s devices show he paid for Duggan’s travel from Australia to China in May 2012.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) and US Navy criminal investigators knew Duggan was giving training to pilots for AVIC.
Duggan shifted to China in 2013 and was stopped from leaving the country in 2014, his lawyer said. He surrendered his US citizenship in 2016 at the US embassy in Beijing.
