WATCH: John Kiriakou and Australian Senator David Shoebridge join CN Live! to discuss an Australian pilot’s fight against extradition to the U.S. as the U.S. maneuvers Australia to see China as the enemy. Cathy Vogan reports.
By Cathy Vogan
in Canberra, Australia
Special to Consortium News
Former U.S., now Australian pilot Dan Duggan this month appeared in Australian federal court to appeal his extradition to the United States on a charge of giving flying lessons at a South African flight academy to Chinese nationals more than ten years ago.
Duggan’s strange case is playing out as the U.S. has been maneuvering Australia in recent years away from good relations with China to instead view it as an enemy.
Duggan was a U.S. Marines pilot until 2002 when he emigrated and settled in the Australian state of Tasmania, fathered six children and became an Australian citizen in January 2012, giving up his U.S. citizenship. There he ran a business of joy rides for tourists called “Top Gun Australia,” and took on a few casual gigs training test pilots.
A secret U.S. grand jury empaneled in November 2016 returned an indictment the next year that alleges Duggan did not obtain a licence from the U.S. State Department for one of these jobs: delivering advanced flight training to Chinese pilots in 2012 in alleged violation of a U.S. arms embargo against China and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).
The indictment against him was filed and sealed in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia in September 2017. Duggan is charged with conspiracy, money laundering and criminal forfeiture. The indictment alleges that:
“Beginning in or around November 2009, and continuing up to and including on or about November 27, 2012, within the District of Columbia and elsewhere, DUGGAN did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate and agree with others known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to
(a) commit offenses against the United States, that is, to export, attempt to export, and propose the exportation of defense services to the People’s Republic of China in violation of an arms embargo imposed upon that country by the United States, and without having first obtained the required license from the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, United States Department of State … and
(b) defraud the United States government by interfering with and obstructing a lawful government function, that is, the enforcement of laws and regulations relating to the export of defense articles and defense services from the United States, by deceit, craft, trickery, and dishonest means, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371.”