The eldest daughter of a man locked in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison while facing possible extradition to the United States for allegedly sharing military secrets is losing hope that her father will ever be the same.
Daniel Duggan, a 55-year-old former US Navy pilot turned Australian citizen, faces charges in the United States for allegedly training Chinese military pilots in aircraft carrier landing and combat techniques.
The United States alleges that the father of six was able to divulge military secrets while working at a civilian flight school in South Africa between 2009 and 2012.
It would be another decade before Duggan was arrested for the alleged crime in October 2022.
His daughter Molly told him 60 minutes He fears the father he once knew has been broken after 19 months of isolated incarceration inside Lithgow Correctional Centre, 150 kilometers west of Sydney.
“I’ll probably never have my dad again,” she told the show.
Molly Duggan (left) doesn’t believe her father, Daniel Duggan (right), will ever be the same after spending 19 months in solitary confinement while facing extradition to the United States.
He’s been in maximum security for so long.
‘Can you imagine being isolated like this for so long?
“He’s not going to be the same person he was before he was taken away.”
She doesn’t believe her father is a criminal.
“I feel like our world has been torn apart and I want the trauma to end,” Molly added.
Duggan faces 65 years if convicted of the charges against him in the United States, according to his wife Saffrine.
Both she and her husband claim that he is completely innocent as he only trained civilian pilots with information available in online textbooks while he was in South Africa.
Mrs Duggan called on Australia to stand firm and avoid accelerating the application of a “death sentence” to her husband.
“It means my children lose their father, our family is torn apart by something that can be stopped,” she said.
“It’s absolutely incredible to think Australia would do this.”
The family has struggled to come to terms with Duggan’s imprisonment in solitary confinement, despite having committed no crime in Australia.
“There are no Australian charges whatsoever. Dan was a proud military sailor. “He is a proud Australian,” said Mrs Duggan.
“He didn’t break any laws. Dan is an innocent man.
“Our truth will win.”
Duggan issued his own petition from behind bars, pleading with Australians to unite against his expedition.
“I asked the people of Australia to help us help my family and fight this injustice,” he said.
In a phone call to a friend from prison, Duggan also expressed fears about the very real possibility of being sent to the United States.
‘It is awful. “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy,” Duggan said.
Saffrine Duggan (pictured on 60 Minutes) has rejected US accusations that her husband shared military secrets with China.
Duggan will know if he will be sent to the United States to stand trial on May 24.
“We will not give up,” his wife promised.
‘He deserves to come home to his family.
“I want to be proud that our Australian government is doing the right thing and bringing Dan home.”
Duggan joined the United States Marines in 1990 and flew Harrier aircraft before leaving the military in 2002.
He then moved to Tasmania, where he met Saffrine, fell in love with her and ran a business called Top Gun Tasmania.
While running his business, Duggan also took on temporary contracts to train pilots at a flight school in South Africa.
In addition to running his business, Duggan will also train pilots in South Africa, where he is accused of sharing US military information.
The family moved to China in 2014, but Duggan claims she had nothing to do with the allegations against her husband.
‘It was the ideal place, there were a lot of Australians who went there. Asia was a real hotspot,” he stated.
Duggan (pictured) was a former US Navy pilot and trained civilian pilots in South Africa after leaving the military.
She and her children returned to Australia in 2020, but Duggan’s passport was confiscated by the Chinese government, for an unknown reason.
He was finally able to return in September 2022, shortly before his arrest.
It was also reported on Sunday that Duggan’s lawyer claimed that Unknowingly, he worked with a Chinese hacker.
Duggan feared that requests for confidential information by Western intelligence agencies were putting his family at risk, the lawyer said in a legal filing seen by Reuters.
The lawyer’s submission supports Reuters reports linking Duggan to convicted Chinese defense hacker Su Bin.
Duggan denies allegations that he violated US gun control laws. He has been in a maximum security Australian prison since his arrest in 2022, after returning from six years of work in Beijing.
U.S. authorities found correspondence with Duggan on electronic devices seized from Su Bin, Duggan’s lawyer, Bernard Collaery, said in the March submission to Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfus, who will decide whether to hand Duggan over to the United States after a magistrate hears Duggan’s extradition case.
The case will be heard in a Sydney court this month, 19 months after his arrest in Orange, central western New South Wales, at a time when Britain was warning its former military pilots not to work for China. .
Su Bin, arrested in Canada in 2014, pleaded guilty in 2016 to theft of U.S. military aircraft designs through hacking from major U.S. defense contractors. He is listed among Duggan’s seven accomplices in the extradition request.
Duggan (pictured), who directed Top Gun Tasmania, will find out if he will be sent to the US to stand trial on May 24.
Duggan knew Su Bin as a labor broker for the Chinese state-owned aviation company AVIC, Collaery wrote, and the hacking case had “no relation to our client.”
Although Su Bin “may have had an inappropriate connection with (Chinese) agents this was unknown to our client,” Duggan’s lawyer wrote.
AVIC was blacklisted by the United States last year as a company linked to the Chinese military.
Messages recovered from Su Bin’s electronic devices show he paid for Duggan’s trip from Australia to Beijing in May 2012, according to extradition documents filed by the United States in the Australian court.
Duggan asked Su Bin to help him source Chinese aircraft parts for his Top Gun sightseeing business in Australia, Collaery wrote.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) and US Navy criminal investigators knew Duggan was training pilots for AVIC and met with him in the Australian state of Tasmania in December 2012 and February 2013. , wrote his lawyer.
ASIO and the US Navy Criminal Investigative Service did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on the meetings. ASIO has previously said it would not comment as the matter was before the court.
“An ASIO official suggested that while conducting his legitimate business operations in China, Mr Duggan could collect confidential information,” his lawyer wrote.
Daniel Duggan’s family (pictured) claim the allegations against him are false and have criticized the Australian government for keeping him in maximum security.
Duggan moved to China in 2013 and was banned from leaving the country in 2014, his lawyer said. Duggan’s LinkedIn profile and aviation sources who knew him said he was working in China as an aviation consultant in 2013 and 2014.
He renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2016 at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, backdated to 2012 on a certificate, after “overt intelligence contact by U.S. authorities that may have compromised his family’s safety,” his lawyer wrote.
His lawyers oppose extradition, arguing there is no evidence the Chinese pilots he trained were military and that he became an Australian citizen in January 2012, before the alleged offences.
The US government has argued that Duggan did not lose his US citizenship until 2016.