A former United States Marine pilot fighting extradition from Australia to the U.S. was charged with training Chinese military pilots to land on aircraft carriers, unknowingly working with a Chinese hacker, his lawyer says.

Daniel Duggan, a 55-year-old naturalized Australian citizen, was afraid of the requests made by the Western Intelligence for putting his family at risk due to sensitive information, said his lawyer.

Duggan denied any allegations against him from working with the Chinese defense hacker Su Bin as well as breaking any US arms control laws. Duggan says that he has been working in an Australian maximum security prison ever since 2022, six years after working in Beijing.

US authorities found resemblance with Duggan on electronic devices taken from Bin. In July of 2014, Bin was arrested in Canada. In March of 2016, he pleaded guilty to theft of U.S military aircraft designs by hacking major US defense contractors, stated CNN.

Duggan knew Bin as an employment broker for the Chinese State Aviation Company (AVIC). Messages taken from Bin’s phone show that he paid for Duggan’s flight to Beijing in May of 2012 according to extradition documents lodged by the United States with The Australian Supreme Court wrote Carolina Coast Online.

The US Navy criminal investigators and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), both knew that Duggan was training pilots for AVIC. They met up with him in Australia’s Tasmania state in February of 2013 and December of 2012, his lawyer wrote.

“An ASIO officer suggested that while carrying on his legitimate business operations in China, Mr. Duggan may be able to gather sensitive information,” his lawyer wrote.

His lawyer said that Duggan moved to China in 2013 but was barred from leaving in 2014. In 2016, Duggan announced that he has gotten his US citizenship at the US embassy in China.