Showing that their home-baked cake had made it safely to school was important in itself, but the Duggan family had little inkling of the happy snap’s broader significance.
The photograph of Daniel Duggan with his kids outside their country New South Wales school captured one of his last moments of freedom.
“That (cake photo) is the last photo of Dan with us,” his wife, Saffrine, said, ahead of Saturday, the day which marks a year since her husband was arrested.
“Every photo that I take or have since, there is one massive hole in our family – their father and my husband.”
In the year since the naturalised Australian citizen was arrested in a supermarket car park in Orange at the request of US authorities, his family has found themselves battling two governments in court, complex federal law, and arcane secrecy provisions in their bid to bring the father-of-six home.
“People ask me how I’m going and I burst into tears,” Saffrine Duggan said.
“I can’t even put words to my real extent of emotions to how deep the hurt and horror really is.”
Duggan, a former US military pilot who became an Australian citizen in 2012, is accused of breaching US arms trafficking laws by training Chinese military pilots while working at a flight school more than a decade ago.
Duggan has consistently denied the allegation. But if convicted, he faces up to 60 years in prison.
The 55-year-old has been held in maximum-security prisons since his arrest: in March he was moved to Lithgow prison, detained in a two-by-four-metre cell.
He is permitted out into an exercise yard daily but has little-to-no human contact besides phone calls home that drop out every 10 minutes, Saffrine Duggan said.
The family also visits each Sunday for one hour, driving 90 minutes from the family farm.
“We feel that it’s been an act of violence and cruelty on our family to take away a beautiful man, my husband, under allegations that are clearly political, that we flatly deny, are unproven and are 12 years old,” Saffrine Duggan said.
“We can’t believe our government has allowed this to happen.”
She holds hope his case could be raised when the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, meets with US president Joe Biden and other officials during a state visit next week. Any agreement for extradition to the US must be approved by the federal government, specifically the attorney general.
“I ask the prime minister to deliver a message … that he will not support the extradition of my husband,” Saffrine Duggan said.
“He belongs with us, in Australia.”
US-born Duggan served more than a decade flying in the US Marine Corps, rising to the rank of major and working as a military tactical flight instructor.
He left the marines in 2002 and moved to Australia, becoming an Australian citizen in 2012 and renouncing his US citizenship in 2017. He has lived in Australia and China since leaving the marines.
A 2017 US grand jury indictment, unsealed last December, alleges Duggan trained Chinese fighter pilots to land fighter jets on aircraft carriers, in defiance of arms trafficking laws, and engaged in a conspiracy to launder money.
The indictment details payments Duggan allegedly received in 2011 and 2012 for his work training Chinese fighter pilots at a test flight academy “based in South Africa, with a presence in the People’s Republic of China”.
He rejects the charges against him as being politically motivated and says the indictment against him is filled with “half-truths, falsehoods and gross embellishments”.
Duggan’s legal team has maintained the US extradition request is politically motivated, catalysed by the US’s deepening geopolitical contest with China. Australia’s extradition treaty with the US states that extradition requests should be refused if they are for an alleged “political offence”.
They have written to the Australian parliament’s treaties committee arguing Australia’s extradition treaty with the US exposes Australians to being unlawfully lured back to the country so they can be arrested.
They argue he was effectively lured back to Australia from China. Prior to his return, Duggan was granted a security clearance by Asio, a requirement for him to obtain an aviation licence. But a few days after his arrival in Australia the clearance was removed, and he was subsequently arrested. Lures or other subterfuges are legal in the US, but not in Australia.
“Whilst these ‘tactics’ are plainly unlawful under Australia’s domestic legal order, the treaty in its present form self-evidently fails to protect Australian citizens from the US using these techniques against them,” a submission to the treaties committee states.
The extradition battle returns to court Monday morning, when Duggan’s legal team is expected to ask to postpone a full hearing.
