Death of Jeremiah Duggan

Death of Jeremiah Duggan

Date	27 March 2003 (2003-03-27)
Location	Berliner Straße, Bundesstraße 455, Wiesbaden, Germany
Burial	Highgate Cemetery, London 10 April 2003
Inquest	First inquest: Hornsey, London, November 2003 Second inquest: opened in Barnet, June 2010.
Coroner	First coroner: Rev. Dr. William Dolman Second coroner: Andrew Walker
Verdict	First verdict (a narrative verdict): Duggan received fatal head injuries after being hit by a car, and had earlier been in a "state of terror"[1]
Website	Justice for Jeremiah (Duggan family) Facts of the Duggan Case (LaRouche movement)

Jeremiah Duggan was a British student at the Sorbonne who died on 27 March 2003 in Wiesbaden, Germany, while attending a youth cadre school organized by the LaRouche movement, an international network led by the American political activist Lyndon LaRouche.^[2]

The German police said Duggan had committed suicide after witnesses said he ran onto a busy road and was struck by several cars. The circumstances of his death became a matter of public dispute when a British inquest rejected a suicide verdict, after hearing the view of the London Metropolitan Police that the LaRouche movement is a political cult. After Duggan's family commissioned private forensic reports suggesting he may not have been hit by the cars, and that his death may have occurred elsewhere, the High Court in London ordered a second inquest, which opened and adjourned in June 2010.^[3] A coroner's report released in Britain in 2015 "totally rejected" the suicide hypothesis.^[4]

The German authorities have declined to reopen their investigation. The Wiesbaden prosecutor said in 2004 there was no doubt that as a consequence of his own behaviour and with no-one else involved, Duggan had thrown himself in front of several cars and died on the third attempt.^[5] In March 2009 a spokesman stressed again that there was no evidence linking the LaRouche movement to the death.^[6] In February 2010 the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany rejected the Duggan family's request for judicial review.^[7]

The LaRouche movement has said the controversy surrounding the death was stirred up by LaRouche's political opponents—including former British prime minister Tony Blair and former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney — because of LaRouche's criticism of the 2003 Iraq War and the man-made global warming hypothesis, and that the affair is being used by Neoconservatives to discredit the movement.^[8]

Background

Duggan family

Jeremiah Joseph Duggan was born in north London on 10 November 1980 to Hugo Duggan, who was raised in Skerries, Dublin, and his wife Erica, a retired schoolteacher originally from South Africa. Erica Duggan's father was a German Jew who fled the country during the Holocaust; she herself left South Africa for England because of apartheid.^[9] The couple had two daughters, followed by Jeremiah; they divorced when he was seven. After his A-levels, he spent time in India, then went to Israel to train as a youth leader, and in September 2001 moved to Paris to study English at the Sorbonne and French at the British Institute.^[10] His mother said he became interested in politics after 9/11, and told his parents he felt it was important to protest against the Iraq war, which is what led him to take an interest in the LaRouche movement.^[11]

LaRouche movement

Lyndon LaRouche and his German wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, run a global political network of publications, committees, and a youth cadre, based in Leesburg, Virginia, and Wiesbaden, Germany. LaRouche has stood as an American presidential candidate eight times. He was jailed for 15 years in 1989 for conspiracy to commit fraud, a prosecution he said was politically motivated, and was released on parole in January 1994.^[12] Since the 1970s the movement has been associated in the mainstream media with the promotion of conspiracy theories, and at times throughout its history with the use of violence against its opponents, the fraudulent use of donations, and anti-Semitism.^[13] There has been criticism of its reported use of a recruiting technique known as "ego-stripping". The Sunday Times writes that recruits are isolated from their families, encouraged to give up their studies, and subjected to intense verbal pressure before being asked to accept the LaRouche worldview.^[14] The movement's members say the allegations are misrepresentations, and LaRouche himself has strongly denied the charge of anti-Semitism.^[15]

LaRouche is particularly critical of Britain, a position adopted by the movement, something Duggan's family say may have been a relevant factor in the movement's view of Duggan. LaRouche said in 1980 that the British are more evil than Hitler, and that British intelligence is involved in global brainwashing and drug dealing.^[16] In 1999 a LaRouche publication said Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) was threatening to assassinate him, probably with backing from the royal household.^[17] In Germany, the movement is represented by the Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität and the Schiller Institute, the latter founded by Zepp-LaRouche in 1984. It was the Schiller Institute that organized the conference Duggan attended, while the youth cadre school that followed it was held by the Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement.

Duggan's involvement with the movement

Nouvelle Solidarité

Duggan's first contact with the LaRouche movement was in Paris in early 2003 when he bought an anti-war newspaper in the street outside the Invalides station on the Paris Metro. The man who sold him the paper was Benoit Chalifoux, the editor of Nouvelle Solidarité, the LaRouche movement's French-language newspaper, and one of the movement's recruiters.^[14] Chalifoux befriended him, then invited him to attend a three-day Schiller Institute anti-war conference in Bad Schwalbach, near Wiesbaden. Duggan asked his mother to look up LaRouche on the Web, but she misspelled it "Laroche," and found nothing to cause concern.^[18] Duggan and Chalifoux travelled to Wiesbaden on 21 March with eight other LaRouche members. Once there, Duggan was given a place to sleep with two other members, Sébastien Drochon and Jean-Adrien,^[19] in an apartment belonging to two Schiller Institute managers, Rainer and Ursula Apel.^[14]

Wiesbaden conference

LaRouche himself was the conference's keynote speaker. It was the eighth day of the war in Iraq, and The Washington Post reports that the mood of the conference was apocalyptic. The Post writes that LaRouche told the audience George W. Bush was an unreformed drunk, Woodrow Wilson had founded the Ku Klux Klan from the White House, John F. Kennedy was killed by a domestic American operation, and the U.S. was using the war in Iraq to ignite global warfare. He said the plot to launch a new world war was being influenced by people who "like Hitler, admire Nietzsche, but being Jewish ... couldn't qualify for Nazi Party leadership, even though their fascism was absolutely pure! As extreme as Hitler! They sent them to the United States." The people behind the plot were the "independent central-banking-system crowd, the slime-mold," he said, the same people who had brought Hitler to power in the 1930s.^[20] In 2004, Aglaja Beyes-Corleis, who left the LaRouche movement in the early 1990s after being involved with it for 16 years, told the BBC that people were drawn into the organization without really wanting to be, and that conferences involved what the BBC said was immense psychological duress. She said she herself had "freaked out" during them, as she put it, as had other members.^[21]

Youth cadre school

After the conference, Duggan decided to stay on with about 50 others for a LaRouche youth cadre school at a youth hostel in Wiesbaden. Benoit Chalifoux, the recruiter who had accompanied him to Germany, returned to Paris. According to The Sunday Times, Chalifoux told another member about his new contact with Duggan, and said he was amused to discover Duggan was a Jew who was reportedly embarrassed by his faith; the newspaper writes that recruiters took note of weaknesses in potential recruits. One other recruiter from Paris, Jean-Gabriel Maheo, attended the youth cadre school. The Sunday Times writes of Maheo that he was known for his ability to draw people to LaRouche.^[14]

According to April Witt in The Washington Post, Duggan stood out because he was British and Jewish. Aglaja Beyes-Corleis told the BBC that Jewish members could be placed under particular pressure at meetings. A memo from the London Metropolitan Police submitted as evidence at Duggan's inquest said the Schiller Institute and LaRouche Youth Movement blamed the Jewish people for the Iraq war and other world problems; the memo said that "Jeremiah's lecture notes and bulletins showed the anti-Semitic nature of [the] ideology."^[22] Duggan's mother said Dr. Jonathan Tennenbaum, the Schiller Institute's scientific adviser, told her after his death 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!"^[23] One participant said the others put him "through the wringer" because of it.^[24]

Witt writes that Duggan may also have been placed under pressure because he told the others he had gone to the Tavistock Clinic as a child for a family counselling session when his parents divorced.^[25] The LaRouche movement believes the related Tavistock Institute is a brainwashing centre for British intelligence; according to Duggan's conference notes, at least one speaker there referred to it in those terms.^[25] In an article about Duggan's death in 2004, LaRouche's security director, Jeffrey Steinberg, referred to Duggan's counselling there, and said the Tavistock had long been associated with radical experimentation in individual and mass psychological manipulation.^[26] Frank Nordhausen writes in the Berliner Zeitung that Duggan may have had the misfortune to represent a combination LaRouche often warned his security teams about—British, Jewish, and linked to an institute LaRouche referred to as "psychos."^[24] According to Witt, LaRouche has been concerned since the 1970s that his members might be brainwashed by intelligence agencies to harm him. She writes that The New York Times obtained a tape recording in 1973 of the so-called de-programming of a 26-year-old British activist, Christopher White, who LaRouche believed had been programmed to kill him. White is heard complaining that he has been deprived of food, sleep, and cigarettes. There are sounds of weeping and vomiting on the tape, and someone says "raise the voltage," though LaRouche, who attended at least one session, said later this referred to the lights being used during the questioning, not an electric shock. White complains about a terrible pain in his arm, and LaRouche can be heard saying, "That's not real. That's in the program."^[27]

Incident

Duggan's telephone calls

Duggan had planned to meet his French girlfriend, Maya, in Paris on Tuesday night, 25 March, two days before his death, but he telephoned her that day to say he had no money for the fare home, and was unable to get a ride until Sunday. He told her very serious things were happening, and that he would explain when he returned.^[25] On 26 March, he went with some LaRouche movement members to Frankfurt to hand out LaRouche literature in the streets. Later they went to the Städel museum to see the Rembrandt collection. When one member asked him what he thought of it, Duggan started sobbing. The woman asked him to step outside with her for some air. He kept repeating that he did not trust LaRouche. She said he was free to leave, and he hugged her and seemed reassured.^[14]

Rainer Apel, the Schiller Institute manager whose apartment Duggan was staying in, told The Sunday Times that Duggan and Sébastien Drochon—who was sleeping in the same apartment and later went to work for the LaRouche group Solidarité et Progrès in France^[23]—got back to the house around midnight. They had no key so Apel remembers having to open the door for them. Drochon told police Duggan was restless, switching the lights off obsessively. He talked about how he was afraid of going bald, was unable to trust LaRouche, and felt trapped.^[14]

At around 4:30 am local time—by now Thursday, 27 March—Duggan borrowed Drochon's cell phone to call Maya again.^[14] Maya said he sounded agitated. He told her he no longer knew what reality was, what was true and what was lies. He spoke of experiments involving computers and magnetic waves. Maya asked him to take a train straightaway to Paris.^[14] She told the BBC: "The first thing he said was that he was under too much pressure. He was talking very quietly. He said that they were doing experiments on humans with computers. The way he spoke was very agitated. He couldn't string a sentence together properly. I asked him who was doing these experiments, and he said the government. He said that they were causing lots of pains to their arms and legs. I tried to find out where he was, but he wouldn't say."^[28]

According to Drochon, after the call to Maya, Duggan telephoned his mother, then ran out of the house at 5:15 am.^[19] It is not clear that the calls to Erica Duggan were made from the same cell phone or directly after the call to Maya.^[24] Mrs. Duggan told the BBC that the first call came in at 4:24 am local time (5:24 am in Germany). She had been unable to sleep and was sitting in the kitchen with a cup of tea. She told the BBC he said "Mum, I'm in ... big trouble ... You know this Nouvelle Solidarité? .." He said, "I can't do this" ... I want out." The line went dead and he called back, reportedly saying, "Mum, I'm frightened." She said: "I realized he was in such danger that I said to him, 'I love you.' And then he said, 'I want to see you now. ..." He told her he was in Wiesbaden. "And I said, 'How do you spell it?' And he said, 'W I E S.' And then the phone was cut."^[29]

Drochon said that after the calls Duggan asked him, "why did you choose me?" and said he wanted to go out for cigarettes. Drochon offered to go with him. At the bottom of the stairs, Drochon pressed the doorbell; he said this happened accidentally as he was looking for the light switch. Duggan appeared to panic at the noise and ran off, Drochon said.^[14] Drochon said he ran after him but was unable to catch up. He then told a Schiller Institute manager, Ortrun Cramer, that Duggan had left the house.^[23]

Death

Forty-five minutes later, at about 6:00 am, the driver of a BMW said he saw Duggan run onto the Berliner Straße, or Bundesstraße 455 (B-455), a dual carriageway in the Wiesbaden suburb of Erbenheim. The spot where he was found in the road, near the LaRouche headquarters, was around five kilometres (3.1 miles) from the apartment he had been staying in.^[30] The driver clipped him with his wing mirror and knocked him over, but Duggan got up and kept on running for another ten minutes away from the centre of town, facing the incoming traffic, before he was hit again.^[14] The driver of a second car, a red Peugeot, said Duggan leapt in front of the car, his arms raised and his mouth open. The driver said the car hit him, shattering the windshield and a passenger door window, and throwing him into the path of a third car, a blue Golf, which ran over him.^[31]

Immediate reaction

Within minutes of Duggan's second call, his mother telephoned the British emergency services, and was advised to call her local police station in Colindale, Barnet. She told police that she believed her son was in danger, and they transferred her to the main office of the London Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, but when she explained he had become mixed up with Nouvelle Solidarité they had no idea what she meant. She telephoned his girlfriend, Maya, who told her Drochon, Duggan's roommate, had called to ask whether Maya had heard from him, because Duggan had left the apartment and had not returned; this call was at 7:40 am, according to the inquest.^[32]

Erica Duggan obtained Drochon's cell phone number from Maya, and said Drochon hung up when she first called him, but when she called a second time he passed her to the Schiller Institute manager, Ortrun Cramer. Mrs. Duggan said there was a lot of shouting in the background, which stopped when Cramer said, "Die Mutter" ("the mother"). According to The Independent, Cramer told Mrs. Duggan that the LaRouche organization was a news agency, and said, "We cannot take responsibility for the actions of individuals. We think your son has psychological problems." Cramer said she would call the local hospitals to see whether Duggan had been admitted.^[19] Telephone records show that call ended at 11:07 am German time, according to The Daily Telegraph. About three minutes later, the Telegraph writes, Cramer, Drochon, and another activist presented themselves at the Wiesbaden police station with Duggan's passport, bag, and rucksack, though another report says that Cramer first contacted them by telephone.^[19] Cramer told The Independent in 2004: "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."^[23]

One LaRouche member, Giselle, said that members of the cadre school were asked to assemble in the local LaRouche office the next day.^[24] The Sunday Times writes that Helga Zepp-LaRouche was present. The first person to speak to the gathering was Jean-Gabriel Maheo, a LaRouche recruiter from Paris, who told the meeting that Duggan had been in the Tavistock, apparently giving the impression that he had been there recently. Zepp-LaRouche then told the meeting Duggan could have been an agent sent from London to harm LaRouche, according to The Sunday Times.^[14]

Inquiries

German investigation

The police in Wiesbaden concluded within three hours that it was a suicide, according to the Berliner Zeitung.^[24] Jürgen Burg, an accident examiner, took 79 photographs of the body, the scene and the cars, though the cars were moved before he arrived to photograph them.^[33] The drivers were reportedly allowed to leave the scene before the investigating officer arrived.^[34] There was no postmortem examination, no signed statements from witnesses, and the police destroyed Duggan's clothes.^[19] Evidence was taken from witnesses, but was recorded only as brief and allegedly contradictory notes, according to The Daily Telegraph, which obtained a copy of the police report.^[19] Written by an Officer Schächer, it concluded there was no doubt Duggan had run onto the road with the intention of committing suicide, and no suggestion that another party was involved.^[19] The police said LaRouche officials told them Duggan had suffered from suicidal impulses, and that he had been a mental patient at the Tavistock Institute.^[25]

Duggan's family appealed the decision to close the police investigation, but it was rejected by the Oberlandesgericht in Frankfurt in July 2006. Their appeal against that decision was rejected by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany on 4 February 2010.^[7]

British postmortem, first inquest

Duggan's body was flown back to England on 31 March, where a non-forensic postmortem examination was conducted on 4 April by Dr David Shove, a consultant histopathologist at Barnet General Hospital. Blood samples showed no trace of drugs or alcohol. Shove found serious head injuries, bruising on the backs of the arms and hands—which a second pathologist later called "defence wounds"—and blood in the lungs and stomach.^[35] He concluded that Duggan had died of head injuries. He did not give evidence at the inquest. Duggan's mother said she had a conversation with the pathologist in which he said he had not been told Duggan had been in a collision with a car, and that he did not believe this was the case, but he declined to sign a statement to that effect, according to Mrs. Duggan.^[36]

The first inquest was held on 6 and 7 November 2003. The court heard from a psychiatrist, Elizabeth Tylden, who specialized in psychosis induced in cult members, that a severe stress reaction can be caused by a rapid change in a person's belief system.^[37] The court also heard that a London Metropolitan Police memo described the movement as "a political cult with sinister and dangerous connections."^[38] The coroner, Dr. William Dolman, ruled that Duggan had been "sucked into" an extreme political organization, and had received fatal head injuries when he ran into the road and was hit by two cars. He added: "I really must add that he had earlier been in a state of terror. It is a word not commonly used in a Coroner's court but no other word would reflect his state of mind at the time."^[1]

Private forensic reviews

The family commissioned five private forensic reports in 2005 and 2007, which they presented on 27 March 2007 to a meeting of British MPs and journalists.^[39] Four of the reports were reviews of 79 photographs taken in Germany by Jürgen Burg, the German accident examiner, and one was a review by a forensic pathologist of the original pathologist's examination. The family also had brown spots analysed that were found on Duggan's passport—the passport was not with him when he died—and it was found to have his blood on it, and that of one other unidentified person, according to the Berliner Zeitung.^[40] Paul Canning, a forensic photographer formerly with the Metropolitan police, produced two reports based on the photographs from the scene. He wrote that he did not believe the damage to either of the vehicles was caused by an impact with body. He wrote: "There are no traces of skin, hair, blood or clothing on either vehicle, nor is there any blood, tissue or clothing debris on the road, except for blood in the immediate vicinity of the body, nor are there any tyre marks or signs on either Jerry or on the cars to indicate that either vehicle came into contact with the body." According to The Observer, Canning suggested Duggan may have died elsewhere and been "placed" at the scene of the accident.^[41]

Second inquest

In light of the forensic reviews, Erica Duggan asked the attorney general in March 2007 for permission to apply to the High Court to order a second inquest,^[42] and in May 96 British MPs signed an early day motion requesting the same.^[43] The High Court ordered the new inquest in May 2010 and quashed the findings of the first. Lord Justice Elias said evidence not available during the first inquest pointed to the possibility that the crash was "stage managed" to look like an accident, and that foul play may have occurred. The court heard a claim that the movement may have believed Duggan was a spy.^[44]

The new inquest was opened and adjourned by coroner Andrew Walker at Barnet Coroners Court on 22 June 2010. The coroner ruled that the LaRouche organization be recognized as an interested party, and that the family's evidence would have to be disclosed to them. The Duggans' barrister, Neil Sheldon, said there were one or two documents the Duggans would argue could not be shared with the LaRouche movement to protect the identity of their source. The coroner said he would pass the evidence to the Metropolitan's Police serious crime directorate with a view to them conducting an investigation.^[45]

Second German investigation, 2015

On 29 June it was reported ^[46] by German news magazine Der Spiegel that there was an ongoing second investigation against two known suspects concerning Duggan being beaten and then chased onto the motorway.

Response

LaRouche movement

LaRouche's director of security, Jeffrey Steinberg, wrote in June 2004 that Duggan had told the other recruits he had recently been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and on the Sunday before his death had tried to find a pharmacy where he could obtain prescription drugs. He said that, after Duggan's death, his mother met with representatives of the Schiller Institute in what Steinberg called a sympathetic meeting, and that her attitude changed only after British minister Elizabeth Symons intervened on behalf of the British Foreign Office.^[26]

In November 2006, LaRouche himself issued a statement saying the allegations were a hoax stemming from a campaign orchestrated by Dick Cheney, then the Vice-President of the United States, and Cheney's wife.^[47] In September 2007, the LaRouche Political Action Committee published a letter from the London 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.^[48] A statement on the website of the Schiller Institute reads: "The Schiller Institute has always maintained that it had no involvement whatsoever in Jeremiah's death, and has expressed its sympathy to the Duggan family."^[49]

German public prosecutor

In February 2004, Dieter Arlett, the Wiesbaden public prosecutor, told the BBC that under German law he could investigate further only if there existed concrete evidence of third-party involvement, and that there was no evidence of that. Arlett said that, so far as he knew, the Schiller Institute had only been mentioned in connection with the death because Duggan had attended an event of theirs. He said the prosecutor's office was 100 percent certain it was suicide, in the sense that Duggan's death was a consequence of his own behaviour, with no one else involved.^[50] In April 2007, Hartmut Ferse of the public prosecutor's office told the Wiesbadener Kurier that the investigation had been very thorough, and showed the reporter ten thick folders of documents related to the case, telling him no other apparent suicide had ever caused so much work for his office. He suggested the murder theory had developed because Duggan's mother cannot accept that her son committed suicide; the newspaper referred to the theories as "myths" ("Legende"), adding that they keep gaining adherents but no evidence.^[51] In an interview in March 2009, Ferse's deputy, Klaus Schulte, stressed again that there was no evidence linking the Schiller Institute to Duggan's death.^[6]

References

Notes

Citations

Further reading

LaRouche movement History Lyndon LaRouche Views of Lyndon LaRouche LaRouche criminal trials Lyndon LaRouche U.S. Presidential campaigns Organizations Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität Citizens Electoral Council European Workers Party Executive Intelligence Review LaRouche movement National Caucus of Labor Committees Schiller Institute Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement Defunct California Proposition 64 (1986) Fusion Energy Foundation North American Labour Party Party for the Commonwealth of Canada U.S. Labor Party Members Robert Beltran James Bevel Michael Billington Amelia Boynton Robinson Norbert Brainin Anton Chaitkin Jacques Cheminade Billy Davis Sergey Glazyev Janice Hart Hulan Jack Kenneth Kronberg Stanislav Menshikov Theo Mitchell Robert James Moon Kesha Rogers Nataliya Vitrenko William Warfield Frederick Wills Helga Zepp-LaRouche Critics Chip Berlet Daniel Patrick Moynihan John Rees Mike Royko People separated from the movement Nicholas F. Benton Robert Dreyfuss F. William Engdahl Laurent Murawiec Webster Tarpley Related persons Jeremiah Duggan J. Gordon Edwards (entomologist and mountaineer) Daniel Estulin Erik R. Fleming Roy Frankhouser Victor Gunnarsson Zbigniew Jaworowski Gordon M. Johnson Karen Kwiatkowski Eric Lerner Fred Newman Friedwardt Winterberg J. L. Chestnut Book:LaRouche movement Wikiquote Wikimedia Commons