The day Dan was arrested was the hardest day I thought in my lifetime. Eva First, I was off to work and Dan was dropping the kids at school. Dan had a cake in his hand, was giving it to the kids, and off he dropped them to school. He went to wool worst because he was going to cook dinner in the evening, grabbed a few things and that's when he was arrested.
In October twenty twenty two, officers from the Australian Federal Police arrested Daniel Duggan in Orange in Regional New South Wales. His wife Safareen was waiting to meet him for coffee.
Well, the irony is that Dan is always on time. His family comes first. So I'd waited.
Ten minutes for him to call me, and I'd sent.
Numerous messages on his phone. Then it got into maybe half an hour. I was so concerned. I was just about to call the police to say I'm really worried about my husband.
Something might have happened to him.
And then he called me. I said, what are you talking about? I don't understand what do you mean.
You've been arrested, like for what what could you possibly have been arrested?
For you know, this is a man.
That's never had never had a parking fine. I've had more parking fines than he has.
To American prosecutors. Dugan is a former US Marine pilot accused of breaking arms trafficking laws by helping train Chinese military pilots in South Africa more than a decade ago, something he denies to Safreene. This is her husband and the man she built a family with.
A friend introduced me to him, and I thought as soon as I turned around and met him, my heart skipped a beat and I was just interested in talking to this beautiful, happy, smiley, friendly, honest man.
It was beautiful.
It was a couple in love and starting a life together, and we did all the beautiful romance things together.
We had children. We knew.
I knew instantly when I met Dan that this was something that I wanted to continue because there was a connection there that we still have, we still hold on tight to that. We then made a family on and that's the most heartbreaking thing for me is that all of this it's ripped our family apart, and we're a strong, loving family, and it's depth stating.
I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven AM today Saffring Duggan on her husband's fight for freedom from jail, and journalist and member of the Free Dan Duggan campaign Michael sainsbrief on how an Australian pilot who worked in China has become the target of US prosecution. It's Monday, April twenty seven and this is part one of a two part episode. Michael, could you start off by telling us who is Daniel Duggan and how did he end up in Tasmania.
Dan is born in Boston. He is the youngest of nine kids. His old man was a pilot. He wanted to become a pilot. He ended up in the US Marines. He actually served in the First off War, although you didn't see combat, is training people and had an.
Honorable discharge from the Marines. He moved to Australia.
In two thousand and five and set up a business in Tasmania called Top nine Australia, which offered joy flights in military style aircraft.
This is Dan Duggett, chief pilot and Managing director of Top Gone Australia.
I'm a former US Marine Harrier jumpjet pilot and weapons and tactics instructor. Eventually he became an Australian citizen as Australia Day in twenty twelve.
So from there, how did he end up in a flying school in South Africa?
ILike everybody who has been in the services, you have to have a career after that. And in the early early twenty tens, an old aviation context reached out from South Africa and said there was work at a quite prestigious test pilot school in South Africa called Tapasa.
So Dan started.
Talking to them and ended up going to do some work for them in twenty eleven and twenty twelve. That school is kind of sits at the crossroads of elite pilot training, and it was at the time of China's aviation burn. Fact was that the commercial airlines there were just doubling, tripling, quadriveling flights. There's three b airlines and they were really struggling to get enough people to fly the plane, so they were sending people all around the
world to get trained. Dan did through short since there as just as a contractor, you know, he wasn't in management. There were a lot of other very senior foreign military people who were both running the school and working there as sort of lead pilots. Too Fasta told him that he was training civilian test pilots.
So what is it the US prosecutors and now saying happened in South Africa? What was he doing?
They say that that true, Too Faster Dan was part of a conspiracy to provide defense services to China without US authorization. Now, what the training school says they were doing is that they were just training Savilian pilots, and they're saying that they were military.
Dan's denying it and defining seals Den.
It's worth noting that none of these other people have ever been charged with him.
Just in terms of what they said he was doing.
They alleged that he the training was connected to aircraft carrier take offs and landings at the time when China was just starting to develop aircraft carriers. The indictment also alleges that Dan evaluated Chinese pilot trainees and was involved in broader work that was designed to improve China's naval aviation capability. All of this stuff standardized, and the training that he was.
Providing really wasn't really military training. It was just very typical training that you were training any pilot for.
Despite all of that, though, Michael, even by Dan's own account, he is a former marine being asked to teach Chinese pilots. So is there any reason that Dan perhaps should have had some concerns or alarm bells ringing? Or does it sound completely reasonable to you?
Sounds simpletely reasonable to me, particularly when you look at the people he employed him. I mean Teeth Hartley, who was running this thing, was a senior, very senior RAF officers. There were other senior Australian and British former military people. They're people who are much more senior than Dan. So for some reason he's been picked out. And possibly the reason he's been picked out is because he changed his citizenship and he was an easy.
Target after the break the move to China and who has sue beIN the businessman who stole US military secrets Michael Daniel Duggan. He left South Africa in twenty twelve. He was there less than a year. What happened next?
At that point he moved to move to China and set up a consulting business for the aviation sector.
When he was planning to move to China, Dan.
Says that he was contacted by Azeo, and he eventually met with Azo and also representatives from NCIS, part of the US military, who knew that he was planning to move.
They knew what had happened in South Africa.
They had no stage during those conversations did they tell him that the work he'd been doing was unlawful.
At no stage did they tell him not to go to China.
As I said, the civil aviation market in China was booming. Those lots of opportunities, there are a lot of There are a lot of Australians and Westerners in China at that stage still are, but particularly at that point, it was you know, it was just posed to impis. Everything was less restrictive than it has become.
The Chinese economic miracle has grabbed global attention for a while now. The country is in its growth targets for fourteen out of the last fifteen years, and the one time they missed it it was fit point one.
And he was working in aviation consulting.
He also ended up helping run the Flying Kangarooba in Beijing, and his wife was working in the fashion business insieth also photographers, so it was it was a good time to be in China to be honest, and there was lots of work around and it was pretty non controversial.
And Michael then enters this Chinese aviation businessman, soon being how does he fit into all of this?
So Sue Bin was a guy who his business was finding Westerners to help in the aviation business in China. He had been involved with connecting Dan with the South African Flying School. As Dan had said, you know, his western name was Stephen, said, everyone knew Steven. Stephen was kind of who you went to, who knew where all work was. He was somebody that was very well known to everybody and was just you know, he was just an agent to help people get work.
In July twenty fourteen, Sue was arrested in Canada and was later extradated to the US in twenty sixteen, where fifty one year old Sue finally there.
He was arrested in Canada and pladed guilty to subsyber related charges.
He admitted that from October of two thousand and eight to March of twenty fourteen, he conspired with two hackers to gain unauthorized access to protected computer networks in the United States, including the ones belonging to the showing company California to obtain sensitive military information.
None of this has got anything to do with Dan. It's been put in the indictment. Dan hasn't been charged with anything that he did in China. He's been charged with training military pilots, which he didn't think he was, and with transpiring to lawns of money, which is just the money he was paid for doing that training. There's a whole lot of other stuff in the indictment which is pages and pages long, that relates to China and things he was doing in China and somebody else in
China who has since gone to jail. None of the stuff he did in China he's been charged with. So all of that stuff is great white noise. It's irrelevant to what Dan's been charged with. And he denies, absolutely denies, all the allegations he has been charged with.
So Dougan is secretly indicted in twenty sixteen via a grand jury. By his account, he has no idea that this sealed US indictment was waiting for him when he returned to Australia. Is that all right?
Yeah?
So Dan has been told by Azio that he'll be fine to get his pilot Sizense back when he comes back, So he comes back. He's kind of cooling his heels in Orange, where his wife was staying with her father and their kids. Is basically house husbanding a bit, waiting for his pilot Slizes to come through and gets picked up in the car park at Woolley's after dropping the Kiosko SCW one day.
The fifty four year old father of six was arrested at his home near Orange in October and now faces extradition an indictment.
The request of the United States, and has since been detained in a maximum security prison. US authorities alleged he was paid about one hundred thousand dollars to train Chinese military pilots. Mister Dugan denies the allegations against him, which also in word conspiracy and money laundry suffering.
Could you tell us more about what this battle has done to you personally and to the family.
This is incredibly hard for our family. Our children have always been at the heart of everything we do, and to watch them suffer is to watch any child suffer as a parent, but they're the ones I feel that really suffer the most.
The amount of birthdays.
Starting new schools, winning awards, watching your children grow up in a timeline you never get back again.
I get so worked up.
I feel ill. I can't breathe.
My head feels like it's in a vice, and I have to recenter. Now, normally, when I think you say that, you sort of recenter, it's one of one of a couple of things. I have to recenter, like continually. It's like I'm on repeat and.
Enough is enough. I'm exhausted.
And what about Dan? How's he doing?
He holds it together for his family. I see him hold it together with the kids. But I get to talk to my husband and he sometimes he's really not together.
He's very worried.
He's deeply sad, and the unknown is still there. There's only so much, you know, anyone can take.
And I'm very, very, very worried about him.
Do you still have hope or is it starting to fade.
We've faced years now of hardship and we will keep going.
Of course, you have hope because when you.
Love someone, and we still believe in Dan's innocence that you have to have hope.
You hang on to hope.
It's what drives you through.
This was part one of a two part episode. In the next episode, we look at how Dan Duggan's case became an extradition battle, what he could face in the United States, why his supporters believe he's been caught in the geopolitical contest between Washington and Beijing.
If this en happened to Dan, it can happen to a lot of other Australians. If we put Australians in jeopardy and are prepared to hand them across to a foreign legals system for things that they.
Did a long time ago that weren't crimes.
Here, you know, it opens a floodgate for foreign governments to be able to reach into our legal system and interfere with it.
That's in your feed now,