SYDNEY - Security agencies may have "lured" a former US Marine Corps pilot from China to Australia before his arrest, his lawyer said outside court on Monday after an extradition hearing in Sydney.
Daniel Duggan, 54, faces extradition to the US on charges of violating US law by training Chinese military pilots to land on aircraft carriers.
In October, he was arrested by Australian federal police in a rural town in the state of New South Wales, shortly after returning from China, where he had lived since 2014.
Earlier that week, Britain warned former defense personnel not to train Chinese People's Liberation Army pilots at a South African flying academy where Duggan had also worked.
"We are exploring at this stage whether or not he was lured back to Australia by the U.S., where the U.S. knew he would be in a jurisdiction where he would be capable of being extradited," he added.
ASIO only issues security clearances to its own employees, but it does provide security advice to other government departments as they conduct checks, such as aviation security identification cards required for employees to access airports.
ASIO said in a statement that it couldn't comment because the case was in court.
Duggan is an Australian citizen who has renounced his US citizenship and is being held in a maximum-security prison. He had lived in Australia for a decade and had six children there before moving to China in 2014.
Duggan was concerned that political tensions between the United States and China were affecting his case, according to Miralis.
Duggan issued a statement to the media in which he denied the allegations leveled against him.
"The insinuation that I am some sort of spy is an outrage," he said in the statement.
This month, Britain's air force chief stated that intelligence agencies in Australia and the United Kingdom had shared information to warn pilots against working for Beijing.
A former British military pilot is being investigated by Australian police for his alleged involvement in the training of Chinese military pilots at a flying school in South Africa, a Sydney court heard on Friday.