A former US Navy pilot fighting extradition in Australia on US government charges of training Chinese military pilots to land on aircraft carriers unknowingly worked with a Chinese hacker, his lawyer said.
Daniel Duggan, 55, a naturalized Australian citizen, feared requests for confidential information by Western intelligence agencies were putting his family at risk, his lawyer said in a legal document seen by Reuters.
The lawyer's request confirms Reuters reporting 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 prison in Australia since his arrest in 2022, upon returning to the country after spending six years working in Beijing.
US 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 judge to hear the ex-pilot's extradition case.
The case will be heard in a Sydney court this month, two years after he was detained in rural Australia 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 stealing US military aircraft blueprints by hacking major US defense contractors. He is listed as one of Duggan's seven co-conspirators in the extradition request.
The former US Navy pilot knew Su Bin as an intermediary at an employment agency for Chinese state aviation company AVIC, lawyer Collaery wrote, and the hacking case had “no relation to our client.”
While Su Bin “may have had improper connections with (Chinese) agents, our client had no knowledge of this,” Duggan’s lawyer wrote.
Source: CNN Brasil
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