SYDNEY (Dispatches) -- The lawyer for a former U.S. military pilot arrested in Australia and facing possible extradition to the United States said his client was wrongly classified as an “extreme high risk” prisoner, and he had asked the attorney-general to release him.
Former U.S. Marines pilot Daniel Edmund Duggan was arrested in New South Wales in October at the request of the U.S. government, the same week Britain announced a crackdown on its former military pilots working to train Chinese military fliers.
The United States must lodge an extradition request for Duggan by Dec. 20 under a bilateral treaty, a Sydney court was told on Monday. The case was adjourned until December 16.
Duggan’s lawyer, Dennis Miralis, said Duggan was classified by the prison system as “extreme high risk” and was denied access pens or stationery; he had also been refused medical treatment.
“This is unprecedented to have an Australian citizen placed on the most strict inmate restrictions, akin with people who have been convicted of terrorist offences and multiple homicides, in circumstances where he has never been in trouble with police,” Miralis told reporters outside court.
Duggan, who denies breaching any law, is an Australian citizen and had renounced his U.S. citizenship, he said. Details of the arrest warrant and the charges he faces in the U.S. are sealed.
Miralis said on Monday he had no details of why the United States was seeking the extradition of his client.
“Trying to speculate how the case against Mr Duggan might be ultimately construed or framed is unprofitable because we simply don’t have the facts,” he told reporters.
He had written to the Attorney General seeking Duggan’s release, and also lodged a complaint with the inspector general of the intelligence services over “the way in which Australian national security agencies have behaved in relation to Mr Duggan”, he told the court.
Duggan, 54, lived and worked in China for about five years before his arrest, corporate records showed, although the details of his alleged offences have been sealed by the U.S. government.
“He’s presently not even able to access pens for the purposes of writing the nature of his complaint,” Miralis told the court.
Miralis suggested outside court that “foreign interference” by the U.S. government could explain the treatment.
“We are concerned there may have been some foreign interference encouraging corrective services to take this dramatic course of action,” he said.
Duggan moved to Australia after leaving the U.S. Marines, running the Top Gun adventure flight company from the southern island of Tasmania.