Taking fight for Truth to the Top

ERICA AND HUGH DUGGAN fighting for truth and justice for their son.

ERICA Duggan, whose son Jeremiah was found dead by the autobahn outside Wiesbaden in Germany after he attended a supposed peace conference in that city, in March 2003, has released a video of herself speaking outside the German embassy, where she had gone to accuse Chancellor Angela Merkel of complicity in a cover-up over Jeremiah's death. 

Earlier in the day on May 28, Mrs.Duggan had given evidence at a pre-inquest review in Barnet, accusing German police of institutional racism in their refusal to investigate fully the circumstances of Jeremiah's death, including the likelihood that he was murdered.

Jeremiah, aged 22, had been studying at the Sorbonne, in Paris. In 2003, worried about the world situation and the build-up to war on Iraq, he bought a copy of the paper Nouvelle Solidarite from a regular seller, and they discussed the imminent US-led assault. Jeremiah agreed to attend an anti-war conference hosted by the Schiller Institute in Germany.

What he probably did not know was that both Nouvelle Solidarite and the Schiller Institute were fronts for the political cult led by Lyndon LaRouche, a one-time American leftist who veered sharply to the Right. After acquiring a name for organising violent attacks on genuine left-wing groups in the States, and serving a prison sentence for fraud, La Rouche seems also to have acquired influential friends and considerable funds.

Former members of the cult allege it used brainwashing techniques. But supporters' loyalty is reinforced by belief that their leader survives in defiance of conspiracies against him, which have at times involved the Queen and Raisa Gorbachev, familiar agencies like the CIA, MI6. and Mossad, and the Tavistock Institute for psychiatry, in London.

At the Wiesbaden conference, Jerry Duggan was reportedly perturbed by speakers blaming the threat of war and nuclear holocaust on the British and the Jews. "But I am a Jew!", he reportedly protested. He was still interested in attending a cadre school scheduled to follow the conference. But before that, something happened to make him 'phone home, and his girlfriend, telling her and his mother that he was "in big trouble" and desperately wanted out.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2004_48_mon_01.shtml

Within an hour of his terrified call to his mother, Jeremiah Duggan was dead. According to the version of events accepted by the German police, Jerry must have run three miles from where he had been staying, to the outskirts of Wiesbaden, then decided to take his own life by rushing out into the traffic. This was about 6am on March 27, 2003. An investigator hired by the Duggan family discovered the police had not even questioned the drivers of the two vehicles that were supposed to have hit the young man, nor made proper forensic examination of the vehicles or Jeremiah's clothes. He suggests Jerry was beaten up somewhere else, then taken to the autobahn where his body was found.

Rather than be eager for a full investigation, the La Rouchites have claimed Jeremiah was an unstable young man who committed suicide, and accused his mother of being party to a plot against them by the British Foreign Office and Tony Blair.

In fact, Erica Duggan has had little help from any authorities in her search for truth and justice for her son. After his phone call, mentioning Nouvel Solidarite, she called the police, who put her on to Scotland Yard, but they said they had never heard of it.  At an inquest in London in 2003 the court heard that a London Metropolitan Police memo described the LaRouche movement as "a political cult with sinister and dangerous connections." The coroner, Dr. William Dolman, accepted that Jeremiah had received fatal head injuries when he ran into the road and was hit by two cars, but 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."

Having obtained evidence that put the official explanation in further doubt, Erica Duggan and her family petitioned the Attorney General to let them approach the Higher Court for a second inquest. This was convened in June 2010. The court heard that Jeremiah may have been killed elsewhere, then the road accident staged to conceal this. It was also said that members of the LaRouche organisation might have decided Jeremiah was some kind of spy. The case was adjourned to let the Metropolitan Police make further inquiries. But their investigation does not appear to got very far.

Following the pre-inquest hearing on May 28, a full three day inquest has now been promised at North London Coroner's Court in February. But evidently Erica Duggan is not leaving it at that. By going to the German embassy and accusing Angela Merkel she is not only going for full publicity, but dragging out the whole question of the LaRouche organisation's real relations with the secret state.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY4E8vXKROc#t=10

Racism Today?

Among interesting points emerging from Erica Duggan's statement is that although the place where Jeremiah Duggan's  body was found is some distance from the apartment where he had been staying with a LaRouchite couple in Wiesbaden, it is not so far from the offices of Executive Intelligence Review, the magazine published by the LaRouche organisation.

That brings me to another strange, if as yet tenuous, connection.

It's some time since I stopped bothering with the RT (Russia Today) television channel, partly because the brash novelty had worn off, but also because I got sick of UKIP leader Nigel Farage being introduced as the reasonable voice on events in Britain. Couldn't they persuade anyone else to come on?  This was before Farage became a regular feature on the BBC's Question Time.

In the current issue of Searchlight, the anti-fascist magazine, editor Gerry Gable remarks about some other guests of the RT channel. One is Paul Weston, leader of a UKIP breakaway called Liberty GB, who has also been linked with the anti-Islamic English Defence League(EDL). Another is Manuel Ochsenreiter, editor of Zuerst! , a right-wing German magazine.

  (Shortly after Zuerst! began publication in 2010,  workers for its distributor, Bauer Media, threatened to strike, refusing to handle a pro-Nazi magazine.After more inforation about Zuert! was exposed , Bauer decided to drop the publication).

"To cap it all", says Searchlight, "a leading LaRouchite appeared again, presented as an expert from the Executive Intelligence Review, which is Lyndon LaRouche's weeekly international news briefing".





 

Jeremiah Duggan. Ten Years On, the Fight Continues

JEREMIAH DUGGAN. Family still fighting for truth and justice over his death. 

TEN years ago the body of London-born student Jeremiah Duggan was found by the side of a motorway outside Wiesbaden in Germany. The police said Jerry had been hit by a vehicle travelling at 60 miles per hour. The official verdict was that the young man had committed suicode by running into the path of traffic.


Jeremiah Duggan's family and friends have never accepted this verdict.

Jeremiah Duggan had been studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. Concerned like many of us at the war on Iraq, he had bought a paper called Nouvelle Solidarite, and accepted an invitation to attend what purported to be an anti-war conference in Wiesbaden.

In the early hours of  Thursday, March 27, 2003 he 'phoned his girlfriend Maya, to whom he sounded highly agitated, and then his mother. to whom he sounded terrified. "Mum, ..I'm in big trouble", he told her.

Nouvelle Solidarite in France and the Schiller Institute in Germany whose conference and cadre school Jeremiah had agreed to attend are both offshoots of the notorious US-based Lyndon LaRouche organisation. LaRouche, a one-time leftist who acquired a reputation for inciting violence against genuine left wing organisations in the United States, and also served a fraud sentence. His organisations, including the Executive Intelligence Review, appear to be well-funded. They are reknowned for conspiracy theories including the British royal family and Israel.

As to Jeremiah Duggan, LaRouche's followers insist the young man was disturbed and committed suicide. They accuse the Duggan family of serving a conspiracy involving the British Foreign Office and the Tavistock Institute.

A British coroner threw out the earlier "suicide" verdict, and the Duggan family went to the High Court to obtain a further inquest and investigation. While the police in both Britain and Germany dragged their heels, the family pursued their own investigation with the help of experts, casting doubt on both the place and cause of Jeremiah's death as accepted by German authorities.
Was Jeremiah Duggan beaten up and body taken to motorway?

Jeremiah Duggan's family and friends have never given up. Their campaign for truth and justice continues to win wide support. Today they issued this statement:

Justice For Jeremiah

TEN YEARS ON AND WILL GERMANY HONOUR THEIR PENAL CODE AND GRANT A FULL INVESTIGATION?

:
Jeremiah made a terrified phone call to his mother in the early hours of the morning, naming the people from the LaRouche political cult as putting his life in danger and begging for his mother to rescue him. Despite this information the Wiesbaden police decided on the spot, without any investigation, that it was suicide and they had no need to investigate the circumstances that may have caused his death.

Germany now stands accused of a violation of article 2 in the Court of Human Rights. 
This is the first time Germany has been accused of such a crime, for the failure to properly investigate a sudden death.

New information was presented by witnesses to include a State Official Mrs Caberta, at the time Religous Sects Advisor of the City of Hamburg ,that Jeremiah was alleged to have been subjected to harm prior to his sudden death yet The Prosecutor in Wiesbaden failed to open enquiries and refused to read the files or see the Duggan lawyers.  

As a result a legal complaint was lodged in September 2011 against the Prosecutor’s office for failing to do their job.

“If there is nothing to hide – then why leave so many questions unanswered – like why did the Manageress of the LaRouche Organization have my son’s passport?” said Jeremiah’s mother.

Ten years on we continue to ask for a full and fearless investigation.  Germany is proud of its Penal Code and so we will never give up hope that good people will come forward and not cover up the truth about Jeremiah’s death and will help us  get a proper investigation  contact:

Justiceforjeremiah.com or justiceforjeremiah@gmail.com.

Serdar Kaya, Christian Noll: on 049 30 627 29 662a.


Background briefing on case of Jeremiah Duggan 

Still Waiting for Justice for Jerry

JEREMIAH DUGGAN. A most unlikely "suicide".

IN case anyone thought we missed it, yesterday was the ninth anniversary of a most suspicious death in Germany. It was a week after the war on Iraq started, thousands of people were being killed, and here in London on March 22 hundreds of thousands of us took part in the second big Stop the War demonstration.

Like lots of other young people, Jeremiah Duggan wanted to do something about the war. The 22-year old from London was studying at the Sorbonne in Paris, and there he bought a paper called Nouvel Solidarite from an older man outside the university. When they discussed the looming war the man told him about an international youth conference against the war, being called by the Schiller Institute, in Wiesbaden.

Jeremiah was not to know that both the leftie-looking Nouvel Solidarite and the intellectually respectable-sounding Schiller Institute are linked to a man called Lyndon LaRouche, notorious in the United States, where he served time for fraud but has also been a promiscuous would-be presidential candidate. LaRouche, also known as Lyn Marcus, emerged from the "far Left" in the 1960s, but developed a cult following and reputation for organised violence against genuine left-wing parties that led to his being re-classified as a new kind of rightist.

Extending his operations to Europe, LaRouche seems to have acquired resources, producing a magazine called Executive Intelligence Review, along with an interesting line in conspiracy theory, in which beside the usual suspects like Jews there appear the Brits, with institutions from the Royal Family to the Tavistock Clinic in London engaged in doing down America.

Jeremiah must have found the conference interesting enough, and was taking full part, but he was troubled by the way some delegates seemed to be blaming the war on Jews. According to eye witnesses he rose up at one point to say "But I'm a Jew!"

Then in the early hours of March 27 he phoned his mother to say he was terrified and wanted to get out. A few hours later his body was found by a motorway on the outskirts of town. According to the evidence accepted by German police he had dashed out onto the motorway, deliberately hurling himself in the path of vehicles. They ruled it was suicide.

Jeremiah's mother, Erica Duggan, has never accepted this, and in November 2003 a north London coroner rejected the verdict, after hearing about his frightened 'phone call home, and testimony from the Metropolitan Police that the LaRouche movement was a "political cult with sinister and dangerous connections".

While the Duggan family continued to seek the truth about what happened to Jeremiah, the LaRouche organisation has been intent on maintaining the suicide theory, claiming it was nothing to do with them, and rubbishing the family. They claimed the young man was on drugs, and said his parents had attended the Tavistock Institute for counselling. They even suggested the whole affair has been got up by Tony Blair and government ministers as a diversion from the war and the death of Dr.David Kelly in suspicious circumstances.

At this rate one wonders whether they are saying Jeremiah Duggan was not a mere suicide, but a dedicated kamikaze raider sent to Wiesbaden to attack the traffic and discredit the Schiller Institute.

Meanwhile investigaters employed by the Duggans found that the police in Hesse had not really examined the vehicles which supposedly hit Jeremiah, nor taken statements from the drivers. Besides his head injuries, the young man's arms showed defensive injuries such as might be sustained by someone trying to shield their head from a kicking, rather than bouncing off a vehicle. There was also wet sand on his jeans which was not found on the motorway. Had he been taken somewhere else, like a builder's yard say, before his body was dumped out on the motorway?

In 2010, after a prolonged legal battle, Lord Justice Elias in the High Court granted Jeremiah's mother Erica a new inquest, and said that fresh evidence showed that Jeremiah's death may have occurred elsewhere and the accident was "stage managed" to look like a road accident.In June that year an inquest was officially opened at Barnet Coroners' Court and immediately adjourned after the coroner ordered that the new material should be given to the police, with the request that they take up enquiries. But the months went by with no sign that anything was being done.

"The police are reviewing the files but they need to go to Germany to find the answers to questions which have been tormenting us, " Erica Duggan told the Jewish Chronicle on December 2 2010. "If the police won't help us then not only have I been obstructed in Germany but I have also been let down by my own country. I think the British police are dragging their heels".

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/42106/duggan-family-asks-answers-death

At a second inquest hearing on September 14 last year the coroner said the police had reported nothing new and the inquiries would need to be pursued by other means. The Duggan family understandably felt let down again.

http://justiceforjeremiah.yolasite.com/summary-of-second-inquest-hearing-on-the-14th-sept.php

Far from being encouraged to pursue her case by the British authorities, Erica Duggan complains that she has had no help whatsoever from the Foreign Office. The Duggan family and friends have also been concerned that the German police and authorities in the state of Hesse seemed to readily accept the Schiller Institute's version of events. They wonder what sort of influence the LaRouche organisation has that provide it with respectability or even protection in Germany.

Nevertheless they have continued trying to get the case reopened there. On February 22, 2012 the Wiesbaden, Hessen Senior Prosecutor declared in a legal document sent to the lawyers Saya Kaya and Christiona Noll representing Erica Duggan that the LaRouche organization is a sect and that it is known to use psychological methods. On March 7, Erica Duggan travelled to Germany where her lawyers advised "this is a break-through and it is to be hoped that this will lead to a greater effort to investigate thoroughly the unexplained death of Jeremiah Duggan."

In March 1986 Swedish police arrested Victor Gunnarsson, a former member of LaRouche's organisation, as a suspect in the assassination of Olof Palme. Gunnarsson was released, but later in turn murdered in 1993 in North Carolina by former police officer Lamont C. Underwood. Although there have been various theories and culprits found for Olof Palme's murder, no one has ever been brought to justice for it.

We don't know whether anyone will ever face justice, or even whether we will be told the truth about what happened to Jeremiah Duggan that night and early morning in Wiesbaden. Nine years have gone by and his death has still not been properly investigated.

There are many of us who, at Jeremiah Duggan's age, might have been attracted to what seemed a worthwhile cause and international event, and could just as easily have found we had stepped into something more frightening. Until the truth is known we can only wish strength to Jeremiah's mother Erica and the rest of his family and friends, and make sure his case is not forgotten.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2259467544/

http://justiceforjeremiah.yolasite.com/

Will new inquest bring justice for Jeremiah?

THE long-sought second inquest on the death of student Jeremiah Duggan is to open next Tuesday at Barnet coroners' court, in north London. Jerry was killed in Wiesbaden, Germany, where he had gone to attend what he thought was a peace conference to oppose the war on Iraq.

His body was found by the autobahn just outside town, on March 27, 2003. German police accepted that he had run out into the motorway and been struck by two vehicles.

But a London inquest in 2004 rejected a suicide verdict, after hearing from the Metropolitan Police that the organisers of the Wiesbaden conference, the Schiller Institute, were a front for the political cult led by the American, Lyndon LaRouche. Hours before his death Jeremiah Duggan had 'phoned his mother saying he was in "big trouble" and wanted to be rescued. The coroner ruled that the student had been in a "state of terror" when he died.

However it was left to the Duggan family and friends to campaign for a full and fearless investigation into Jerry's death. The evidence they gathered with the help of professional experts pointed to a very different picture than that accepted by the German authorities, even as to whether Jerry was killed by the two vehicles, or elsewhere, and his body brought to where it was found.

The LaRouchites meanwhile have claimed variously that the British student was on drugs, or some kind of spy, and that the allegations of suspicious death were part of a high-level conspiracy against them involving British and US government figures, and the Tavistock clinic in London.

At a hearing in the High Court in London last month the Duggan family won their case for a new inquest. Before it can be held the process of gathering the facts and making the enquiries takes place and only then does the Coroner hold a full Inquest and give a verdict. The official opening of the Inquest will start the process and be presided over by the North London Coroner Mr Andrew Walker.

After the official opening relevant matters can be discussed in preparation for the initiation of a full fact finding enquiry into the cause and circumstances whereby Jeremiah met his death. It is not a criminal trial nor will any guilty party be blamed. But Lyndon LaRouche, who from the start opposed any full investigation, has written to the Coroner to become an "interested party."

In April 2010 Judge Elias and Mr Justice Aikenhead were presented with legal witness documents which provided new information about how Jeremiah was in the offices of the LaRouche Executive Intelligence Review prior to his dead body being found on the road and that Jeremiah was seen as the enemy and a spy and hunted down . This information together with other reports led the two Judges in the Royal Court of Justice to state that “in the interest of Justice” a fresh Inquest should be held.

In Germany, where the Wiesbaden prosecutor had ruled that no one else but Jeremiah Duggan himself had been responsible for his death, a spokesman for his office stressed again in March last year that there was no evidence linking the LaRouche movement to the young man's death. In February 2010 the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany rejected the Duggan family's request for judicial review of the decision not to reopen the inquiry.

The Duggan family and supporters say they welcome the start of a process of Justice and hope it will "set a precedent of how human life is to be valued whether at home or abroad, but also show how we are with Germany and France members of one European Community and committed therefore to assist one another in examining fully and fearlessly how Jeremiah met his death".

Official opening 9am on Tuesday 22ndJune 2010 ( one hour duration)

BARNET NORTH LONDON CORONERS COURT29 Wood Street High Barnet EN5 4BE
Tel:020 8447 7680.Nearest tube Northern Line High Barnet.

For more information :www.justiceforjeremiah.comor emailjusticeforjeremiah@googlemail.com

New inquest into death of Jerry Duggan

A north London family's long, dogged fight for truth and justice for the death of their son was given a step forward today, when the High Court ordered a fresh inquest on Jeremiah Duggan. Lord Justice Elias said it must investigate evidence of "foul play".

Jeremiah Duggan, 22, from Golders Green, was studying at the Sorbonne and the British Institute in Paris when his concern at the impending Iraq war led him to attend what he took to be an international peace conference in Germany, in March 2003. He had heard about it through a paper called Nouvelle Solidarite.

What Jeremiah did not know was that Nouvelle Solidarite, and the Schiller Institute which hosted the conference, were fronts for American cult leader and convicted fraudster Lyndon LaRouche. But when the student heard people at the conference seeming to blame the war on Jews, he spoke up, saying that he was Jewish.

Exactly what happened afterwards we do not know.

Except that Jerry phoned home that night, saying that he was in "big trouble", and "frightened". And the next morning his dead body was found on the B455 motorway outside Wiesbaden, some miles from where he'd been staying.

A German inquest found he killed himself, apparently by running out into traffic. This was disputed by a British coroner in November 2003,who found that Jerry Duggan had been in a "state of terror", but accepted that the cause of death was head injuries after running into traffic. Unfortunately this inquest did not adjourn for fresh evidence.

Lord Justice Elias, sitting with Mr Justice Aikenhead, said fresh evidence suggested that the death may have occurred elsewhere and the accident "stage managed" to look like a road accident. It was alleged, said the judge, that one member of the LaRouche group had told his mother: "We have hunted him down... it is right that he is dead, he is a traitor and a spy."

Forensic experts who studied the evidence found the vehicles had been moved after the alleged accident, contrary to police procedure. Neither of them showed any biological traces such as might have been expected from hitting a body at speed. Nor were there any tire marks on Jeremiah Duggan's body or clothes.

Light brown sand on Jeremiah's jeans was similar to that between the treads of the vehicles' tires. But there was no sand like this on that stretch of motorway. That suggested the student and the cars might have been somewhere else, and the body was then taken to the place where it was found.

An expert who studied Jeremiah's head injuries thought they would have been caused by numerous repeated blows, rather than being struck by a vehicle. Lack of biological traces on the damaged vehicle windscreen suggested that rather than hitting a person, it could have been broken deliberately with a crowbar or some such implement so as to fake the appearance of an accident.

Juustice Elias said: "It is sufficient that fresh evidence here could alter the verdict.

"It puts in issue whether or not there may have been foul play.

"It is necessary that this fresh inquest is held if for no other reason than to seek to allay the suspicions naturally raised by the evidence which has now been produced to the court."

Following the ruling, Jeremiah Duggan's mother, Mrs Erica Duggan said: "The judge gave a brilliant judgment. No country has investigated my son's death properly as yet.

"The German state has failed us. The British state has an obligation to establish how Jeremiah died."

She hoped that the German authorities will reopen the case following this ruling.

Five years on, Jerry Duggan's family still pressing for investigation

JEREMIAH DUGGAN
What did he stumble upon in Wiesbaden?


FIVE years ago, early in the morning of March 27, 2003, a young man's body was found by the side of a dual carriageway about five kilometres outside Wiesbaden, in Germany.

The body was identified as that of Jeremiah Duggan, aged 22, a British student. German police told reporters that the young man had committed suicide by leaping in front of two cars. According to their story he had first bounced off the bonnet of one car, then picked himself up to run in front of another. Why he chose this unusual kind of suicide was not explained, nor how he came to be that far out of town at the time of the morning when he did it.

Jeremiah Duggan's family and friends have never accepted the "suicide" explanation. Nor did a St.Pancras coroners' court which reviewed the case. Next Thursday, April 3, at 2pm, Jerry's mother Erica and others will present a petition to Downing Street asking for a full investigation into the death of Jeremiah Duggan. Besides the forensic details, they are concerned as to what a peculiar political cult might have had to do with it, and why this outfit has been so anxious to avoid an investigation.

Jerry Duggan was the son of an Irish father, Hugo, and a Jewish mother, Erica, whose family were refugees from Germany. His uncle Hans whom I used to know was an active communist involved in the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa before he came to Britain. Jerry was studying in Paris in 2003 when the Iraq war started. Friends and teachers remember him as a cheerful, friendly young man, with an inquiring mind, concerned about what was happening in the world, but not committed to any political affiliations. When someone sold him a paper called Nouvelle Solidarite however, Jerry was interested in what it had to say about the war. He agreed to attend a conference in Germany, hosted by the Schiller Institute.

At the conference, disturbed that some seemed to blame the war on Jews, Jerry stood up and identified himself as a Jew, to argue against them. If he sensed some hostility, he nevertheless decided to stay on in Wiesbaden for a cadre school.

In the early hours of the morning of March 27, 2003, Jeremiah made two 'phone calls, one to his girlfriend in Paris, and another to his mother, Erica, in London. "Mum, I'm in big, big trouble", he said. He told her he was really frightened, and needed to get away from the organisation and the people he had been staying with. Two hours later he was found dead by the roadside.

With neither a proper medical examination nor witness statements, German police apparently decided that the student had committed "suicide" by running into the path of two motor vehicles. An Inspector Shaecher apparently accepted a claim from the people at the Schiller Institute that the young student they had invited to their school had been receiving treatment for depression, or mental illness, at London's Tavistock clinic. Erica Duggan says there was no truth in this.

The inspector told her there were no "suspicious circumstances" to investigate about the death, and and that he had no grounds to investigate the Schiller Institute which was a "respectable organisation".

No suspicious circumstances? As Erica Duggan hired lawyers and made her own enquiries, she learned that strangely, neither of the cars that were supposed to have hit her son had any traces of blood or tissue. On the other hand when a Schiller Institute official handed back Jeremiah's passport which they had been holding it did have bloodstains. The Insitute denied that the couple with whom Jerry had stayed in Wiesbaden were anything to do it, but it seems they were members.

As for "respectability", both the Schiller Institute and the French paper Nouvelle Solidarite are offshoots of a cult launched in the United States by a man called Lyndon LaRouche, who used to be active under the name "Lyn Marcus" among left-wing circles. LaRouche and his followers in the United States gained notoriety for violent attacks on other left-wing groups, such that Communists and Trotskyists, among others, suspended their mutual hostility in order to oppose him. The cops on the other hand seem to have looked the other way. Before long LaRouche had moved well over to the Right, hobnobbing with various politicians and supporting Reagan's "star wars", though his clever ways with finance earned him a stretch in prison.

When she opened Jeremiah's bag and looked at his papers, Erica Duggan found examples of the LaRouchite world view, in which Jews and the British, particularly the Royal Family, figured in various conspiracies.

The LaRouchites moved into Europe particularly Sweden and then Germany, in the 1970s, when many US draft resisters and GI dissidents were entering these countries. In Sweden one of the LaRouche "Swedish Labour Party's members was arrested as a suspect after the assassination of Social Democrat premier Olaf Palme. LaRouche set up the Schiller Institute in Germany together with his partner Helga Zepp, to give his movement a more cultural image. They appear well-funded, with headquarters in both Wiesbaden and Leesburg, Virginia. The LaRouchite magazine Executive Intelligence Review, to which companies can subscribe, mixes the theories with enough well-informed analysis and fact as to sound authoritative and convincing.
.
Last November 100 British MPs signed a motion calling on the Attorney General to hold an investigation into Jeremiah Duggan's death. They all received letters from the LaRouchites urging them not to follow this through. Like Erica Duggan, whom the LaRouchites accused of working for George Bush and Tony Blair, just because she wanted to know what really happened to her son, this has made them all the more determined to uncover the truth.

Today a friend of Jerry Duggan is doing a sponsored sky dive to raise funds for the justice campaign. That hardly sounds like some state-backed conspiracy. Jeremiah Duggan could have been any of us when young, concerned about the state of the world and looking for answers, trying out what seemed an attractive venture, an international anti-war conference, only in his case to stumble into something else. Jeremiah's mother Erica deserves support and strength to pursue truth and justice for her son, and in doing so benefiting others still to come.

The Justice for Jeremiah campaign website:
http://www.justiceforjeremiah.com/

St.Pancras Coroners report in Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/nov/05/politics.students

Book on Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism:
http://lyndonlarouchewatch.org/newamericanfascism.htm

Family wants new inquest on Jeremiah Duggan

THE family of a student killed after attending a political cult's conference in Germany four years ago say they have new evidence to support their case for a fresh inquest.

Jeremiah Duggan, 22, died in Wiesbaden, where he had gone to attend a youth cadre school organized by the Schiller Institute and the La Rouche Youth Movement, both part of US presidential candidate Lyndon La Rouche's organisation.

Jeremiah was said to have run out into a busy road and been struck by two vehicles. German police ruled it was suicide. The St.Pancras Coroner's Inquest in London in November 2003 accepted that ‘he received fatal injuries when he ran into the road and was hit by two private cars', but not that it was suicide, saying that the young man "had been in a state of terror.’

Besides Mrs. Erica Duggan's account of how her son phoned home in a state of fear and distress saying he was in serious trouble, the coroner had heard a report from Scotland Yard describing the LaRouche outfit as a "political cult with sinister and dangerous connections."

Now solicitors Leigh Day & Co who are acting for Mrs. Duggan are asking the Attorney General to order a new inquest. If it is granted, Leigh Day & Co believe the new evidence may lead to an outcome of ‘unlawful killing’.

Forensic pathologists employed by Leigh Day found that there were no traces of skin, hair, blood or clothing on either of the vehicles which were supposed to have hit Jeremiah Duggan, nor was there any trace of blood, tissue or clothing on the road. The victim's body bore no tyre marks or other signs of contact with a vehicle.

"The final resting place of both cars, one parked neatly behind the other following impact at around 80-90 KPH indicates that the cars are likely to have been moved prior to forensic examination, thus compromising the integrity of the forensic investigation by the German authorities", the solicitors reported.

Most damning if confirmed, the investigators considered that Jeremiah's head injuries were more consistent with being struck blows than with a road traffic accident, and his arms showed signs of ‘defence wounds’ suggesting that he tried to protect himself. He had ingested quantities of his own blood before he died, which suggests he had been injured some time before rather than being killed instantly by a fast car. The experts suggest that Jerry may have lost his life elsewhere, and was then left in the busy road to make it look as though he had been killed in an accident.
New evidence shows 'suicide' student was beaten to death
Mark Townsend and Jamie Doward,
Sunday March 25, 2007 The Observer

Jerry Duggan had been studying at the Sorbonne in Paris when he bought a copy of Nouvelle Solidarite, the LaRouche movement's French-language paper, and was befriended by its editor Benoit Chalifoux. Although he had not been involved in politics before the student was concerned about the war with Iraq, and persuaded to attend the Wiesbaden conference to learn more about the LaRouchite's explanation of world affairs.

Although now regarded, not without justification, as a right-wing conspiracy theorist, Lyndon LaRouche, a one-time member of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States (not to be confused with its British namesake) had enough grounding in Marxist economics together with scholarly style to make his ideas sound intellectually respectable and impressive, to the impressionable young and even to some who should know better. But it seems at Wiesbaden some of his followers may have let the cover slip in their excitement.

Erica Duggan says she was told "Jerry had reacted strongly when he heard the Jews being blamed for the Iraq war. He had stood up and exclaimed: 'But I'm a Jew!'". Nevertheless, he decided to attend a cadre school held by the LaRouche Youth Movement in a nearby youth hostel.

At around 4:15 a.m. on Thursday, March 27, 2003 the student telephoned his girlfriend. In a statement to police she said he sounded incoherent and faint. He said: "I'm under too much pressure. I don't know what the truth is any more, or what are lies." He said his arms and legs hurt and he had discovered some "very grave things" but could not tell her about them on the telephone. He said he would return to Paris the next day and would tell her then.

Then he telephoned his mother in London just before 4:30 a.m. He said in a quiet voice: "Mum, I'm in terrible trouble, deep trouble. I want to be out of this. It's too much for me. I can't do this. I want out..." The line went dead. He called back seconds later and said, "I am frightened."

That was the last anyone heard from Jeremiah Duggan. About three quarters of an hour later he supposedly ran out into the traffic. Later German police did find that a senior officer at the Schiller Institute, Ortrun Kramer, was in possession of Duggan's passport. The family wants to know whether Kramer took possession of Duggan's passport before his death.

The LaRouchite movement has claimed the whole Jeremiah Duggan affair and the allegation of murder is part of a conspiracy against Lyndon LaRouche to thwart his presidential ambitions, and counter his movement's opposition to the Iraq war and exposure of global warming claims. Linking in Jerry Duggan's visit to the Tavistock Clinic in London, and a meeting his mother had after his death with Baroness Symonds at the Foreign Office, LaRouche's head of "counter-intelligence" Jeffrey Steinberg, writing in the movement's Executive Intelligence Review blames a "Trans-Atlantic network" orchestrated by US vice president Dick Cheney and his wife.

Oddly, it does not seem to have occurred to the conspiracy-minded La Rouchites to ask for an investigation themselves, into the suspicious death at the hands of "persons unknown" - presumably imperialist agents of some kind - of a potentially promising recruit of theirs. They seem to prefer arguing that it was suicide, or an accident, and denying there is anything to investigate.

See:
Jeremiah Duggan: suspicious death abroad
Weblinks
Justice for Jeremiah

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Duggan#Duggan.27s_death

Tim Wohlforth, who met LaRouche when they were both dissidents from the American SWP, has written about the cultist's evolution from left-wing milieu to rightist at:
http://www.publiceye.org/larouche/Wohlforth.html


An article that could not be published in News Line

I never knew Jeremiah Duggan or his parents, though I did meet an old uncle of his who was inter alia a refugee from Nazi Germany, a South African communist, and an excellent singer. He was involved in anti-Apartheid campaigning, and occasionally attended Jewish Socialists' Group meetings. Friends who do know the family don't see them as the kind of people associated with Dick Cheney or the British Foreign Office, let alone sacrificing their son for a conspiracy.

I never encountered the La Rouche movement, either, I'm happier to say, but... One morning in 1976, when I was working on the Workers Revolutionary Party's daily paper, The News Line, my colleague Jack Gale took a 'phone call from somebody in Sweden who was asking for information about a former British soldier who had gone to that country. This ex-squaddy had been in the news some time before for trying to get Amnesty to investigate the use of torture by British forces in Aden.

The caller indentified himself as being from the "Swedish Labour Party". But as Jack said to me, surely the main reformist party in Sweden was called the Social Democrat party? So was this just another name or another crowd altogether? Who was this Swedish Labour Party? It so happened that I had already been reading something about La Rouche moving his operations into Europe (notably Germany, where US forces were stationed, and Sweden, where many GIs opposed to the Vietnam war had surfaced). The LaRouchites had set up European Labour Committees, and were using the name Labour, or Workers Party.

Whoever the caller from Sweden was, I don't think they got any information from us about the ex-soldier who had turned up in Sweden. Instead, I decided to write an article for News Line about La Rouche and his organisation, mainly using material that had been published by our co-thinkers in the Workers League in the United States. It described how Lyndon LaRouche, who had formerly used the "party name" Lyn Marcus, had moved to the right, mobilising his ex-student supporters in the United States in organised gang attacks on left-wing organisations such as the Socialist Workers Party and Communist Party. The suspicion arose that state forces which had turned a blind eye to such violence might have more than an interest in promoting this sinister tendency internationally. At any rate the left and the labour movement in Europe should be alerted.

That article never saw light of day. News Line editor Alex Mitchell strode into the office telling me we could not possibly publish anything like this. He may have been instructed by Gerry Healy, the WRP's top (indeed sole) leader whom he always had to consult closely. By way of explanation he remarked "we don't want some LaRouchite nutter throwing a bomb into the workshop", or words to that effect. The implication I took was that I had been very irresponsible to risk exposing us to such danger.

The strange thing about this caution, mind you, is that back in the mid-1970s the WRP had launched an extensive project to expose agents and conspiracies within the Left, from the GPU organised assassination of Leon Trotsky through to FBI infiltration of the Socialist Workers Party. Alex Mitchell travelled backward and forward to the United States researching a series of articles co-authored with David North of the Workers League, on "Security and the Fourth International". When a comrade called Tom Henehan was murdered in New York and another, whose name I have forgotten, in Sri Lanka, the Healyite International Committee and its American sympathisers had no hesitation in linking their martyrdom to the Security investigation, suggesting it had touched bone, and implicating the leadership of the SWP in the murder conspiracy.

(Without detracting in any way from the courage of the two comrades, nor the political circumstances of their deaths, I have seen no evidence of the "Security" connection. Indeed, when I tried to check the name of the Sri Lankan victim I found that he was not even mentioned when the North group commemorated Tom Henehan. My guess even at the time was that the comrade was murdered by thugs because he was organising plantation workers, and he should be honoured as a martyr for the working class rather than used or tossed aside according to whether you can drag in the Socialist Workers Party).

Going back to 1976-7, it seemed strange - you can say what you like about real or alleged agents in the United Secretariat or the Socialist Workers Party, even implicate them in murder, but you had better not mention another organisation in case they really are agents and murderers.

In 1986, following the assassination of Swedish prime minister Olaf Palme, the spotlight briefly fell on the LaRouche movement when literature from the European Workers Party was found at the home of Victor Gunnarson, the first murder suspect. The LaRouchites had been running a hate campaign for some time against Palme, who was also resented by the Pentagon for his neutralism and providing a haven for war resisters.

Also in 1986, after Healy had made an undignified exit from the WRP accused of sexual abuse, slanders and other offences, and Alex Mitchell had proclaimed loyalty to the old reprobate before resuming his career in the capitalist press, I returned to the old office and found among other things, a possible clue to the reticence; a series of letters between Gerry Healy and Lyndon LaRouche during the latter's brief sojourn among SWP dissidents. It evidently had not taken Healy long to see through "Lyn Marcus"/La Rouche and his grand scheme, nor had the Workers League in the US been afraid to expose him. But they reacted quite fiercely to my somewhat flippant treatment of the Healy/LaRouche letters, possibly because I went on to suggest that "Security and the Fourth International", in which they had such a stake, was a flawed investigation.