The horrific incarceration of Australian Daniel Duggan, a political prisoner in his own country, will have lasted two years next week.

In that time he has been locked up in four different maximum security prisons, based only on untested allegations from the United States government. He has no charges against him in Australia and has never been in trouble with the law anywhere in the world; he has no history of violence.

The Duggan family as well as their friends and supporters now anxiously await the decision of Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus to exercise his discretion to end this travesty of injustice and return Dan to his family so they can pick up the pieces of their lives.

Dan has unwittingly been caught up in the unacknowledged Cold War between China and the US and its close allies like Australia, a split super-charged by the AUKUS pact, apparently singled out from countless former military pilots plying their trade post-service. He has had his own human rights – as well as those of his wife and children – capriciously trampled by the Federal and New South Wales governments. He and his family have been forced to fight this case with one hand tied behind their backs after the US froze his wife Saffrine’s main asset, a NSW coastal property.

In late August, Dan’s legal team headed by barrister Bernard Collaery, filed a submission to Dreyfus under Section 22 of the Extradition Act. Collaery himself has been a well-known victim of injustice by Australia’s increasingly secretive and uncountable security apparatus and bureaucracy, with charges against him for acting for spy services whistle-blower Witness K.

Dan Duggan is fighting the extradition on a number of grounds, including a failure of due process by the United States, politically motivated charges and a lack of dual criminality which needs to be applied for the extradition to be validated.

The submission also presents evidence that Daniel Duggan was an Australian citizen when the alleged breaches of US law took place. United States........

© Pearls and Irritations