Ex-US pilot held in Australia faces US charges over export of defence services to China

Former US Marine pilot Daniel Edmund Duggan, who was arrested in Australia, faces charges of conspiracy to unlawfully export defence services to China and violating the US arms export control act, according to a 2017 indictment unsealed by a US District Court in Washington.

Australian police provisionally arrested Duggan in the rural town of Orange at the request of the US government in October, pending a likely extradition request by the US.

The District of Columbia court on Friday unsealed the indictment and a US warrant for Duggan because it said he had been arrested.

Duggan is being held in custody in Sydney and his case will return to a Sydney court this week. The US must lodge an extradition request for Duggan by Dec 20 under a bilateral treaty.

Duggan faces four charges, including conspiracy to defraud the US by conspiracy to unlawfully export defence services to China, conspiracy to launder money, and two counts of violating the arms export control act and international traffic in arms regulations.

Duggan's lawyer, Dennis Miralis of Australian law firm Nyman Gibson Miralis, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for commento.

He has previously said Duggan denies breaching any law, and is an Australian citizen who had renounced his US citizenship.

Duggan moved to Australia in 2002 after a decade in the US Marines, later moving to Beijing in 2014 where he worked as an aviation consultant. He returned to Australia from China weeks before he was arrested, according to his lawyer.

The US indictment lists two Chinese names for Duggan, Ding San Xing and Ding San Qing.

Reuters previously reported that in 2014 Duggan shared a Beijing address with a Chinese businessman, Su Bin, who was arrested in Canada in July 2014 and sentenced to prison in the US two years later after pleading guilty in a high-profile hacking case involving the theft of US military aircraft designs. 

Duggan's wife, Saffrine Nydegger Duggan, has launched an online petition asking Australia to refuse any US extradition request.

"Daniel has been caught in a geo-political storm for working in China, doing work that has been done there for decades by Western, African and European pilots for decades with the full knowledge of these Governments," she said in the petition. She did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.