Jeremiah Joseph Duggan (10 November 1980 – 27 March 2003) was a British student in Paris who died during a visit to Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany, after being struck by several motorists on a dual carriageway. The circumstances of Duggan's death became a matter of dispute because, at the time he died, he was attending a youth "cadre" school organised by the LaRouche movement, an international network led by the American political activist Lyndon LaRouche.
Arguing that German police had not investigated the case thoroughly, Erica Duggan commissioned forensic reports which suggested the car crash might have been staged and that Duggan had died elsewhere. After protracted litigation in the UK and Germany, the High Court in London ordered a second inquest in 2010, and in 2012 the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court ordered the Wiesbaden police to reopen their investigation.
The LaRouche movement attributed criticism of its involvement in the case to LaRouche's political opponents, including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and former US Vice President Dick Cheney, who they say sought to discredit LaRouche over his opposition to the 2003 Iraq War and his criticism of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming.
Background
Duggan family
Jeremiah Duggan was born in North London to Erica Duggan, a Jewish schoolteacher from South Africa; and her husband, Hugo Duggan, who was raised in Ireland. Erica's father left Berlin in 1933; many family members were killed during the Holocaust. Erica, in turn, left South Africa due to apartheid. She, Hugo, Jeremiah and his two older sisters made their home in the London suburb of Golders Green. Duggan's parents divorced when he was aged 7. Duggan was interested in the arts, music and the theatre, and in 2001 moved to Paris to study French at the British Institute and English at the Sorbonne. Duggan's mother said he became interested in politics after 9/11; his strong opposition to the Iraq War led him to become involved with the LaRouche movement.
LaRouche movement
thumb|[[Lyndon LaRouche, 2006|alt=photograph]]
Lyndon LaRouche and his German wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, ran a global political network of publications, committees and a youth cadre based in Leesburg, Virginia, United States, and in Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany. He was jailed in 1989 for conspiracy to commit fraud, a prosecution he claimed was politically motivated.
From the 1970s the movement became associated with the promotion of conspiracy theories, and at times with the use of violence against opponents, the fraudulent use of donations, and antisemitism. There was criticism of its recruitment methods; according to The Sunday Times, recruits were isolated from their families, encouraged to give up their studies, and subjected to intense verbal pressure before being asked to accept the LaRouche worldview. Members said the allegations were misrepresentations, and LaRouche strongly denied the charge of antisemitism.
LaRouche was particularly critical of Britain and of the Tavistock Institute in London, a psychotherapy and social sciences charity that the movement associated with British intelligence. In 1999 a LaRouche publication claimed Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) was threatening to assassinate LaRouche, probably with backing from the British royal family. Duggan's family came to believe that this worldview affected the movement's perception of Duggan when the conference participants learned that he was a British Jew who, as a child, had attended the Tavistock Clinic for counselling when his parents divorced. Protests were taking place worldwide in the weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003. Duggan began seeing more of Chalifoux's group and was invited to attend a Schiller Institute conference near Wiesbaden, the LaRouche movement's European headquarters. Duggan and his parents assumed it was an anti-war conference. His mother searched for material about LaRouche on the web in vain; possibly she or her son misspelled the name as "Laroche."
Youth cadre school
After the conference, Duggan attended a LaRouche Youth Movement cadre school in Wiesbaden with 60–70 others. Chalifoux, the recruiter who had accompanied him to Germany, returned to Paris.
Duggan reportedly stood out because he was British and Jewish. According to Duggan's mother, the Schiller Institute's scientific adviser, Jonathan Tennenbaum, told her that when Duggan heard the Jews being blamed for the war during a seminar, he had stood up and said, "But I'm a Jew!"
According to Witt, Duggan may have been placed under further pressure because he told the others he had attended the Tavistock Clinic as a child for counselling when his parents divorced. Duggan's conference notes showed that someone at the conference referred to the Tavistock as a "brainwashing" centre.
Duggan's telephone calls
One of the Schiller Institute managers in whose apartment Duggan was staying told The Sunday Times that he and his roommate returned to the house around midnight. They had no key so the manager opened the door for them. According to the roommate (speaking after Duggan's death to his girlfriend), Duggan could not sleep and kept switching the lights on and off. He repeated that he was unable to trust LaRouche and felt trapped. According to the roommate, Duggan then telephoned his mother, after which he ran out of the house.</blockquote>
After the calls, according to the roommate, Duggan asked, "Why did you choose me?" and said he wanted to go out for a cigarette. The roommate went too but pressed a doorbell by accident while looking for the light switch at the bottom of the stairs; he said this appeared to make Duggan panic and he ran off. One of the drivers said Duggan ran toward him with outstretched arms. Forensic reports commissioned by Erica Duggan suggested that he may have died elsewhere and been moved onto the road after the fact, a position the coroner rejected in 2015. At around 11 am Erica rang the roommate's mobile phone; because he did not speak English, he passed it to a Schiller Institute manager. The manager reportedly told her the group was a news agency, adding, "We cannot take responsibility for the actions of individuals. We think your son has psychological problems."
The manager told The Independent: "I believed he had psychological problems, based on the conversations he had with people. I don't know what happened on the night he died, but the Schiller Institute played no part in his death." The accident investigator noted marks on Duggan's clothes consistent with having been in contact with the underside of a vehicle.</blockquote>
Under German law, Arlett said that he could investigate further only if there existed "concrete evidence of third-party involvement," and there was none; the Schiller Institute had been mentioned in connection with the death only because Duggan had attended an event of theirs. Officials maintained the same position in 2007 and 2009.
First British inquest
Duggan's body was flown back to England on 31 March 2003, where a non-forensic post-mortem examination was conducted on 4 April by pathologist David Shove. Shove found head injuries, bruising on the backs of the arms and hands, blood in the lungs and stomach, A blood sample showed no drugs or alcohol.</blockquote>
Private forensic reviews
Erica Duggan set up the "Justice for Jeremiah" campaign in April 2004 with legal support from the British Foreign Office. In 2005 she hand-delivered a list of questions to Shove, the pathologist who had performed the autopsy. A forensic pathologist suggested that bruises on Duggan's hands and arms were defensive injuries. Two other forensic experts expressed similar views. After protracted legal action by Erica, the High Court ordered the new inquest in May 2010.
The inquest took place over three days in May 2015 at North London Coroner's Court before the coroner Andrew Walker. Walker rejected the view that the accident had been staged, calling it implausible. The court heard from Catherine Picard, a French expert on cults, that Duggan might have experienced "intense pressure and psychological violence" at the conference, including one-on-one sessions, hours of lectures, and "being subjected to repeated conspiracy theories and antisemitic discourse." Matthew Feldman, a historian at Teesside University and expert on the far right, testified that, if other participants had learned that Duggan was Jewish, British and had attended the Tavistock Clinic, "it would have been taken very seriously by the movement."</blockquote>
He added that Duggan's attendance at the conference, the methods used to recruit young people, Duggan having expressed that he was a Jew and British, and questioning what he was being told "may have had a bearing on Mr. Duggan's death in the sense that it may have put him at risk from members of the organization and caused Mr. Duggan to become distressed and seek to leave."
Second German investigation
thumb|upright=1.25|alt=photograph|[[Oberlandesgericht in Frankfurt]]
Duggan's family appealed unsuccessfully in 2006 to the Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) in Frankfurt regarding the decision to close the German police investigation. Their appeal against that decision was rejected by Germany's Federal Constitutional Court in 2010.
A second appeal to the Oberlandesgericht succeeded in 2012. In what the Berliner Zeitung described as an extremely unusual decision, the court ordered the Wiesbaden prosecutor to re-open the inquiry. The court said that a pedestrian leaving the LaRouche offices in Wiesbaden, in the direction of the town centre, would have reached exactly that junction in the Berliner Straße, and "would have had to cross the four-lane road if he did not want or was unable to turn back."
The new investigation opened in April 2013. Erica criticised the appointment of the same police officer who had presided over the case in 2003, accusing the German authorities of "institutional racism" akin to that of the Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry. In 2014 the Board of Deputies of British Jews asked Chancellor Angela Merkel to arrange an independent investigation, and in 2015 asked the British Foreign Secretary to raise the issue with the German government.
LaRouche response
thumb|Grave of Jeremiah Duggan in [[Highgate Cemetery]]
In 2006 LaRouche issued a statement saying the allegations were a hoax stemming from a campaign orchestrated by Dick Cheney, then Vice President of the United States, and Cheney's wife Lynne. In 2007 the LaRouche movement published a letter from the Metropolitan Police, dated 14 July 2003, that it said was obtained under the British Freedom of Information Act, in which an officer wrote that he had been assured the case had been fully investigated in Germany. In 2015 a spokesperson told Newsweek that the allegations were "utterly preposterous":
<blockquote>At no time has Ms Duggan ever presented any evidence or facts that refute the findings of the German authorities concerning the suicide of her son. Instead, over the last 12 years she and her representatives and collaborators have propounded wild conspiracies theories promulgated by the political enemies of Mr LaRouche in and around the British Monarchy and the circles of the now discredited former prime minister Tony Blair.