AUSSIE TOP GUN... IN DANGER ZONE

FACING SERIOUS CHARGES, THE FORMER PILOT IS INA LEGAL AND POLITICAL FIGHT FOR FREEDOM

For Saffrine Duggan, wife of imprisoned pilot Daniel Duggan, and the couple’s six kids aged 6 to 18, these past school holidays have been particularly tough.

“That’s when they miss their father the most,” Saffrine tells WHO. “This is the time that they would be spending quality time with their dad. But he’s locked up in prison.”

Daniel, a former US marine ‘Top Gun’ pilot who moved to Australia in 2002 and gained his citizenship in 2012, faces extradition to the USA after he was arrested in a supermarket car park in the New South Wales country town of Orange on October 21 at the request of the United States government and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. US prosecutors have drawn up a list of charges against him that centre around his alleged training without permission of Chinese military pilots between 2009 and 2012, drawing a charge of conspiring against the US government. The 54-year-old denies all charges, but if found guilty faces a potential jail term of more than 60 years.