Former fighter pilot Daniel Duggan is fighting to push back a court date that will decide whether he is eligible for extradition to the US as his legal bill nears $1 million.
The ex-top gun's lawyer, Jolan Draaisma, appealed on Wednesday to delay extradition proceedings on the grounds Duggan and his supporters were still seeking funding to pay for his legal defence.
The cost of his defence so far is already more than $800,000, Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court was told.
A plan by the family to sell their property on the NSW south coast to pay the bill was successfully opposed by the US, which sought to have the asset frozen.
The family has instead approached Legal Aid about supporting Duggan's defence.
But the government agency was yet to make a determination and was asking for further information to assess the application, including the merits of the case, Ms Draaisma said.
A decision might not be made until June, the court heard.
Magistrate Daniel Reiss said it was unusual for a party to be looking for Legal Aid to "pick up the tab" halfway through proceedings.
Lawyer Trent Glover, acting for the US, formally opposed the application to push back the extradition hearing.
Howard Adams, another of Duggan's lawyers, said outside court that his client was the one suffering the most from the case being delayed.
"He's not even allowed to have a laptop computer to prepare his case so as you can imagine, he's feeling an immense amount of frustration about what's going on at the moment," he said.
Mr Adams added it was "bizarrely" the US that put the Duggans in the position of having to seek extra time by blocking the sale of their property.
The US was now opposing his application for postponement, he noted.
Duggan was arrested on an extradition warrant at a supermarket car park in the NSW central west in October 2022 at the request of US authorities.
The 55-year-old former US military pilot, who became an Australian citizen in 2012, is accused of breaching arms-trafficking laws by training Chinese pilots while working at a South African flight school in the early 2010s.
The father of six denies the US allegation.
Duggan's wife Saffrine and several of his children appeared outside Wednesday's court hearing holding banners calling for his release.
"Every single day I ask myself, 'how can this be happening to my family – my husband and our six beautiful kids'," she said.
Ms Duggan said her husband had been held in a two metre by four metre maximum-security isolation cell for close to 500 days with minimal contact with the outside world.
"He has been abandoned by his country … by the politicians who are supposed to represent us and by an extradition act that allows the US the ultimate power," she said.
Arguments over whether to delay Duggan's extradition hearing have been set for April 4.
