Former United States Marine Corps pilot Daniel Dugan will be extradited from Australia to the United States over allegations he illegally trained Chinese airmen. Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfus approved the extradition on Monday, ending a nearly two-year attempt by the Boston-born 55-year-old to avoid being returned to the United States.
Duggan, who served in the Marines for 12 years before immigrating to Australia and renouncing his US citizenship, has been in a maximum security prison since his imprisonment. stopped in 2022 in his family home in the state of New South Wales. He is the father of six children.
Dreyfus confirmed in a statement Monday that he had approved the extradition, but did not say when Duggan would be transferred to the United States.
Warwick Ponder/handout via REUTERS
“Duggan was given the opportunity to make the case for why he should not be released to the United States. To make my decision, I took into consideration all the elements available to me,” Dreyfus said in the press release.
In May, a Sydney judge ruled that Duggan could be extradited to the United States, leaving an appeal to the attorney general as Duggan’s last hope of remaining in Australia. In a 2016 indictment from the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., unsealed in late 2022, prosecutors said Duggan conspired with others to provide training to Chinese military pilots in 2010 and 2012, and possibly be at other times, without requesting an appropriate license.
Prosecutors say he received payments totaling about the equivalent of $61,000 and international travel from another conspirator for what was sometimes described as “personal development training.”
If convicted, Duggan faces up to 60 years in prison.
He denies these allegations. “We feel abandoned by the Australian government and deeply disappointed that it has completely failed in its duty to protect an Australian family,” his wife, Saffrine Duggan, said in a statement on Monday. “We are now considering our options.”