An Australian pilot accused of accepting money to illegally train Chinese military personnel has denied he is a flight risk and described himself as a model prisoner in a formal request to be released into home detention.
Daniel Duggan has written to the acting New South Wales corrections commissioner from Lithgow maximum security prison where he is being held in isolated custody while he fights extradition to the US.
Duggan, a former US marine who became an Australian citizen, has been charged with four offences in the US including conspiring to launder money and two counts of breaching arms trafficking laws.
The US alleges that Duggan said he hoped his children would be set for life after he committed to training Chinese naval pilots, court documents show.
He was allegedly paid between $116,000 and $188,000 to carry out the training in South Africa between 2010 and 2012.
Duggan has consistently denied the allegations against him and labelled them politically motivated.
If convicted, he faces up to 60 years in a US prison. He has spent 14 months in prison in NSW since he was arrested in October 2022.
Guardian Australia understands Duggan requested to be separated from the general prison population out of concerns for his own safety. Duggan’s team claims he was pressured into signing that request after he had already spent nearly a year in isolation.
In his letter to the acting NSW corrections commissioner, seen by Guardian Australia, Duggan stated he was “being punished as if I was convicted of some heinous crime”.
“Of course, the main justification for granting a home detention order in my case is not really for me, it is for my children, wife and father-in-law who are under an enormous, unhealthy level of trauma and duress,” he said.
“I humbly request that you exercise your authority to grant me home detention so I can assist my family with household chores, like cleaning, cooking, washing up, doing the laundry and jobs that are required on the farm.”
Duggan said he had been trapped in a “continuous nightmare of segregated and isolated incarceration” since the Australian federal police arrested him on behalf of the US in his hometown of Orange in regional NSW in October last year.
“To those who irrationally suggest that I might be a flight risk and do not accept that the most valuable collateral of all are my six children, I submit that Australia … is the safest place for me to be,” he said.
A Corrective Services NSW spokesperson has previously said the state “does not use” solitary confinement although they conceded Duggan was housed in a one-person cell with a small outside yard.
The spokesperson said the department “does not have the authority to release unsentenced inmates to home detention”. The department otherwise declined to comment on Duggan’s request.
In his letter, Duggan said former NSW premier Bob Carr had raised his case with the corrections minister, Anoulack Chanthivong, who advised him the corrections commissioner was “the person who is empowered” to release him into home detention.
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Chanthivong declined to comment when contacted by Guardian Australia. Carr was unavailable to comment.
As well as a team of lawyers, Duggan has hired communications agency pCOMZ to manage publicity for his case, which hinges on counterclaims of a political conspiracy as well as a public pressure campaign featuring his family.
US authorities say emails, travel and payment records led them to believe Duggan provided unauthorised defence services to Chinese pilots by training them at a controversial test flying school in South Africa.
They argue Duggan was aware of the legal restrictions on the export of US defence services before he allegedly breached them by providing training services to the Chinese military.
US authorities almost missed the five-year statute of limitations during which they could file charges against Duggan who was indicted by a grand jury in 2017.
The indictment says Duggan breached arms control laws by training Chinese fighter pilots and that his “co-conspirators” bought a T-2 Buckeye aircraft from a US dealer to use for the training by providing false information.
The indictment also says Duggan gave a presentation in China in 2011 entitled “The Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Mission Success”.
Lawyer and Australian Army veteran Glenn Kolomeitz, who is acting as an advocate for the Duggan family, said it was “common” for former military personnel to give presentations of the kind Duggan allegedly gave in China.
Kolomeitz said Duggan worked at the South African flying school “providing training for Chinese civilian pilots” and “had no reason to believe otherwise”.
The federal attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, has approved Duggan’s extradition request, meaning Duggan will be handed over to the US unless his legal team can prove his extradition is unlawful.
