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Australian CitizensParty
Media ReleaseWednesday, 21 May 2024
Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://citizensparty.org.au
Support Dan Duggan—demand Mark Dreyfus uphold Australian lawand sovereignty
Australian citizen and former US Navy “TopGun” pilot Dan Duggan faces an extradition hearing in Sydney this Friday, butonly because Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has hitherto refused to upholdAustralian law.
Duggan, who has spent 18 months in solitaryconfinement in Lithgow Correctional Centre away from his wife Saffrine and sixchildren, should not have spent one day in prison because the Attorney-Generalshould never have approved his arrest on the request of the United States.
The reason why is that Duggan’s case does notmeet the most important condition of Australia’s extradition treaty with theUnited States.
That condition is “dual criminality”—thecrime for which an extradition is approved must be a crime in bothcountries—but the alleged crimes for which the US Department of Justice hasindicted Dan Duggan are not crimes in Australia, period.
The DoJ is accusing Duggan of passing on USmilitary secrets by training Chinese military pilots in South Africa in2012—which he denies, saying he (and the dozens of other top gun trainers whohaven’t been arrested) only trained civilians—but the specific charges in theindictment are breaches of the US Arms Export Control Act, which are not breaches of any Australian law.
Corruptsubservience to America
The fact that, knowing this, AG Dreyfusapproved Duggan’s arrest in October 2022, shows that Duggan’s is yet anothercase where the Australian government is choosing to put its strategic andfrankly pathetic subservience to the USA ahead of the law and the welfare of anAustralian citizen.
In the case of Julian Assange, Australiangovernments have not objected to the Americans seeking to apply US lawextraterritorially against an Australian citizen who does not live under USjurisdiction and wasn’t even present in the United States when the allegedcrime was committed (although, belatedly, because Australian public opinion hasswung behind Assange, the Albanese government has advocated for his release,whilst still not objecting to the principle of extraterritoriality).
In the case of war crimes coverupwhistleblower David McBride, Mark Dreyfus’s refusal to use his power to end theprosecution on public interest grounds led to the November court hearing inwhich the judge took away McBride’s defence on national security grounds, toprotect information related to Australia’s dealings with the United States.
No confidence inrule of law
Given that Dreyfus did not block the USextradition request on the basis of it not meeting the black-and-whiterequirement of dual criminality from the get-go, the Australian public can haveno confidence in the legal process to which Dan Duggan is being subjected,which appears to be riddled with corruption and dirty tricks to rig the outcomethe Americans are demanding.
Examples include:
- Duggan’s arrest despite no dual criminality;
- Duggan’s treatment in prison, including his solitary confinement, being shackled and dressed in an orange jumpsuit when moved, and not being allowed to use a computer to work on his defence, not even one not connected to the internet, despite being on remand and the only prisoner at Lithgow Correctional Centre not convicted of a crime;
- The AG’s office officially not commenting on the case, but discreetly backgrounding journalists to read the US indictment so the reporting of the case is coloured by the US allegations as if they are true;
- A court ruling for the Americans to freeze the sale of his wife’s farming property as “proceeds of crime” to stop it funding his defence—despite the property being worth many times more than the $180,000 Duggan earned in total from the South African flight school work for which he’s been indicted; and
- The hostility of the magistrate handling his case, who upheld the US freezing his wife’s asset so it can’t be used to fund his defence, and ruled against Duggan receiving legal aid, saying [paraphrase] “he’s a smart guy, he can defend himself” (consequently, Duggan’s core legal team is working pro bono for now, against the full legal might of the USA).
Why Dan Duggan?
After 18 months of such treatment, and facinghis final hearing which may see him extradited to the USA and jailed for morethan 60 years, Dan Duggan has finally revealed information that explains themystery of why, given the number of former military pilots who worked at thesame South African training school as Duggan, only he has been arrested andtreated this way.
The information Duggan has just revealed in aletter he hand-wrote from prison is that after heworked at the South African school, but before he startedhis airline industry consultancy business in China, Australia’s spy agency ASIOand the US Navy Central Intelligence Service contacted him to ask him to spyfor them in China.
According to Duggan, the spy agenciesindicated no problem with what he did in South Africa, but were keen on him tostart his business in China.
Duggan was taken aback, but as a patrioticmilitary-trained person, he agreed to cooperate, except he didn’t do anyspying, and the relationship broke down when US actions caused Duggan to comeunder suspicion in China, resulting in him being blocked from leaving China forseven years.
After the relationship broke down, the US DoJindicted him in 2017, which wasn’t acted on until 2022, when he was finallyback in Australia.
Australian Citizens Party Research DirectorRobert Barwick broke the news of this stunning revelation in a 16 May 2024YouTube interview with Daniel Dumbrill: BreakingInfo: The US Punishes Their Unwilling Australian Asset & His Family, NewDan Duggan Details
Robert Barwick questioned whether the entireaction against Dan Duggan is some kind of payback by the intelligence agencies,and called on Australians to support Duggan and his family:
- by demanding that AG Mark Dreyfus uphold Australian law; and
- by supporting the family’s legal fighting fund.
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