London Coroner's Careful Verdict Leaves Case for Pursuing Justice

A London coroner has accepted that London student Jeremiah Duggan was killed when he ran into motorway traffic outside Wiesbaden, in Germany, as reported by witnesses; but rejected the German authorities' verdict that Jeremiah committed "suicide". 

Although he did not accept a theory that Jeremiah could have been killed elsewhere and his body taken to stage the accident on the autobahn, the coroner at Barnet acknowledged that some of the bruising on the young man's body suggested he had been involved in an "altercation" before he met his death.  He also noted the political circumstances which might have had a bearing on Jeremiah's death.

Concerned at the build up to war on Iraq, Jeremiah, 22, had been  attending a supposed anti-war conference called by the Schiller Institute, part of an international organisation headed by American cultist Lyndon LaRouche, when he died.

In a narrative verdict, Coroner Andrew Walker said:

“On the 27th March 2003 in the early hours of the morning Jeremiah Joseph Duggan, who had been attending a conference run by a far-right wing organisation, was staying with a friend in Wiesbaden with a family. “Having spoken to his girlfriend and mother in alarming terms Mr Duggan, having asked to leave the house for a cigarette accompanied by the friend, suddenly ran from the house. The friend who was with him did not follow him.

“At about 6am the same Jeremiah Joseph Duggan received fatal injuries following a collision with two cars on the Berlinerstrasse and died in a road traffic collision.

“The fact that he attended a conference run by this far-right wing organisation, and the method that the organisation used to recruit young persons at that time - against the background of the start of the Iraq war, together with Mr Duggan expressing that he was a Jew, British and questioning the material put before him - may have had a bearing on Mr Duggan’s death, in the sense that it may have put Mr Duggan at risk from members of the organisation and caused Mr Duggan to become distressed and seek to leave.

“There are a number of unexplained injuries that suggest that Mr Duggan may have been involved in an altercation at some stage before his death.”

(my emphasis -CP)

During the inquest expert witnesses including a former member of the LaRouche organisation testified to the methods used by the cult in attracting and indoctrinating members. The court also heard that after Jeremiah Duggan rejected some of the things said in conference, members were told he must be some kind of spy.

When the verdict was read out, Jeremiah's mother, Erica Duggan, shouted “Justice, we want justice”.
Speaking outside, she welcomed the verdict but said she was disappointed the coroner had rejected expert evidence suggesting Duggan had been killed before his body was moved to the motorway as part of an elaborate setup.

“I was emotionally shocked and disappointed at the fact he did not take enough notice of the very powerful evidence he had from experts,” she said. “I am going to fight on but I am not sure I will do it through the justice system.”

In a statement, the Duggan family said they were grateful that some of the facts had come out in court about why Jeremiah tried to get away from the conference, and expressed the hope that other students would not be taken in by such extremist organisations.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/21/jeremiah-duggan-death-not-suicide-british-coroner-rules

http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/crime-court/anti_semitic_cult_may_have_subjected_jeremiah_duggan_to_mental_violence_before_his_death_

http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/crime-court/shadowy_world_of_larouche_the_far_right_cult_that_hides_behind_veil_of_left_wing_political_movement_1_4091305

Searching for Justice for Jeremiah Duggan

JEREMIAH DUGGAN.  Unlikely 'suicide'.  Normally cheerful student 'phoned home in terror before meeting his death at Wiesbaden.


A LONDON family's long search for truth and justice for the death of their son in Germany reached Barnet Coroner's Court this week, and reports of the case have brought to public notice the sinister international cult headed by Lyndon LaRouche, little known in Britain, but long notorious in the United States, where it began, before extending its activity to continental Europe.

Jeremiah Duggan was just 22, and studying at the Sorbonne in Paris in 2003 when, worried over the prospect of war on Iraq, he bought a paper called Nouvelle Solidarite, and was invited by the seller to attend a youth anti-war conference being organised in Wiesbaden, Germany, by the Schiller Institute. 
What he was not to know was that Nouvelle Solidarite is produced by Lyndon LaRouche's supporters  in France, and the cultural-sounding Institute (Friedrich Schiller was an 18th century philosopher and poet) was founded by LaRouche's German wife, Helga Zepp LaRouche.

At the conference, Jeremiah apparently disagreed with some of the things he heard, - some of the speakers seemed to blame Jews for the war - and he said so. But he agreed to attend a cadre school to continue discussion. He was not to make it.  His body was found by the side of an autobahn on the outskirts of town. German police accepted that he had run out into the road, and been struck by two vehicles, and recorded it as "a suicide by means of a traffic accident".

The Duggan family and friends have never accepted this explanation. For one thing they say Jeremiah was a cheerful, healthy young man, happy with his studies and his girlfriend, and had no reason to end his life in the horrible way described. For another, his mother Erica Duggan received a 'phone call from Jeremiah on the night that he died, saying he was in serious trouble and sounding terrified. In May 2010 the High Court ordered a fresh UK inquest after judges said evidence of possible foul play must be investigated.

At the new inquest in Barnet, as well as hearing Erica Duggan retell that 'phone call, the court heard from Paul Canning, a forensic photographic expert Paul Canning who said that after examining pictures from the scene, "the only possible conclusion is that it must have been a set-up".

Mr Canning, who has over a decade of experience working with the Metropolitan Police, said there was no evidence of contact between Mr Duggan and two vehicles - a Peugeot 406 and a Volkswagen Golf - which the German investigation found had been involved in his death.

He said: "After making a lengthy examination of the photographs I conclude that, based on my experience of attending hundreds of fatal and very serious road traffic accidents, that in examining the scene of the accident, the road, Jeremiah's body and both vehicles involved, I could find no traces of blood, hair, tissue or clothing on the vehicles or road, except round the immediate vicinity of Jeremiah's body."

He added that both vehicles and Mr Duggan appeared to have traces of a wet sandy substance which was not present at the scene and therefore placed them elsewhere before the alleged accident - perhaps a builders yard or quarry. .

He said the damage to the Peugeot, which is claimed to have hit Mr Duggan, appeared to have been caused by a "heavy metallic instrument" or possibly another car rather than a person. He described damage on the Volkswagen, which is said to have run Mr Duggan over after he jumped out and hit the Peugeot, as "inconsistent".

Coroner for north London Andrew Walker asked: "Are you saying the damage to the vehicles is unlikely to have been caused by an impact with a person?"

"Yes sir, in my opinion," Mr Canning replied.

"Is it likely that damage to the vehicle has been placed there?"

"After looking at the photographs the only possible conclusion I could find was that it was placed there and further, that it looks like pre-existing damage that was undertaken prior to this incident."

"Are you saying this was a constructed road traffic collision?"

"It certainly looks that way, sir."

Written evidence from forensic pathologists said Mr Duggan’s body had not suffered from drag marks or head injuries consistent with being run over by a car, the inquest heard.

After Mr Duggan’s death on March 27, 2003, a witness told the family of the chaotic scenes at the LaRouche conference, the court heard. Jeremiah's father Hugh Duggan said: “All their members, 40 to 50 of them, were gathered into a room and addressed by Helga LaRouche, the wife of LaRouche, at this stage she said, ‘Jeremiah Duggan is dead. We believe he was a spy sent to harm the organisation and now we want you to pack up and go home right away. Don’t talk among yourselves about this and don’t talk to others.”

That summer Hugh Duggan arranged a meeting with the German ambassador in London to discuss his concerns over the far-right group’s involvement in the lead up to his son’s death, the inquest heard. Mr Duggan told the court: “The first thing he (the German ambassador) said was, ‘We know all about LaRouche. We have been after him for years’.”

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/death-of-british-student-jeremiah-duggan-killed-after-attending-farright-cult-must-have-been-a-set-up-10261696.html

If the authorities in Germany knew all about LaRouche they, and particularly the police in the State of Hesse where the Wiesbaden institute is situated,  seem to have been quick to accept the "suicide" story which the LaRouchites proffered. British police have been slow to follow up the call for a new investigation, saying they were awaiting evidence from Germany. Most if not all the efforts to investigate what happened have been pursued by the Duggan family themselves.

I regret to say I never met young Jeremiah Duggan, nor knew the family, but as it happens I did know his grandfather Hans Freund, who died in 2007. Having left Germany as a refugee from the Nazis, Hans joined up to fight them in World War II, taking part in the campaigns in north Africa and in a daring prisoner of war escape. Later he was involved as a Communist Party member in the underground struggle against the Apartheid regime in South Africa, a cause he continued to support after coming to Britain. Best-known and loved in London as a hearty Jewish choral singer, Hans also joined the Jewish Socialists' Group, which was how I came to know him.  A good-humoured, even jovial man, modest about his own role and background, but a source of strength and encouragement. 
http://www.sacsobu.org/memoriam09.html#3
http://www.ajr.org.uk/journalpdf/1990_april.pdf

I'm sure Jerry Duggan must have taken courage, intelligence and good humour from both the Jewish and Irish sides of his family.

Like Jeremiah Duggan, and I suppose many other people, I started my acquaintance and active involvement in politics through buying a paper off someone in the street, though thankfully it was not Nouvelle Solidarite but Newsletter, the paper of the Socialist Labour League, when I was 17, and though neither still exist I'm alive to tell the tale.


From 1976-8 I was employed as a poorly-paid hack on the daily News Line.  One morning my colleague the late Jack Gale took a 'phone call, and hand over the mouthpiece, turned to ask me whether the reformist party in Sweden was called the Social Democrats? Which I confirmed.
Jack had taken a call from someone saying they spoke for the "Swedish Labour Party", asking for information about a former British soldier who had turned up in Sweden. This was a man who had testified about torture used by British forces on prisoners in South Yemen. But I also recognised the name "Swedish Labour Party" as one used by an organisation which Lyndon LaRouche had established in Sweden. We did not ring them back with any information.

Lyndon LaRouche, often using the name "Lyn Marcus", had been among a group of left-wing dissidents around the US Socialist Workers Party, America's original Trotskyist organisation, who opposed its leadership and made contact with the Socialist Labour League, led by Gerry Healy in Britain.  Unable to remain long in any group that he was not leading, LaRouche/Marcus (Tim Wohlforth recalls his "gargantuan ego") soon broke with the rest and set off on his own direction.  

Still posing as some kind of left-wing revolutionary, setting up the National Caucus of Labor Committees, while concentrating on recruiting students, LaRouche began to systematically inculcate violent hostility to other groups among his followers, going well beyond ordinary sectarianism. They turned to organised violence and thuggery.  

Armed with chains, bats, and martial-art nunchuk sticks, NCLC members assaulted Communist Party, SWP, and Progressive Labor Party members and Black Power activists, on the streets and during meetings. At least 60 assaults were reported. The operation ended when police arrested several of LaRouche's followers; there were no convictions, and LaRouche maintained they had acted in self-defense. Journalist and LaRouche expert Dennis King writes that the FBI may have tried to aggravate the strife, using measures such as anonymous mailings, to keep the groups at each other's throats.^[45][46


http://www.lyndonlarouche.org/newamericanfascism.htm

Opponents doubted whether LaRouche's organisation could operate in the way it did without some complicity from state forces. Although he did serve a prison sentence for fraud, LaRouche seems to have led a charmed life, and his organisation and publications have had no shortage of funds or prestigious contacts as they expanded their activities to Europe. Former members describe the organisation as functioning like a cult, while the LaRouchite Executive Intelligence Review, circulating among business and political circles, combines often well-informed analysis with bold conspiracy theory.

Among other things the LaRouche movement has claimed the British Royal Family heads a global drug smuggling racket, the Tavistock Institute in London is a British intelligence front for brainwashing subjects, and that Jessica Duggan's quest for truth about her son's death is part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the British Foreign Office.  

Back in 1977, when we got that 'phone call from the LaRouchites to News Line, little or nothing had been published about them in Britain. But there had been plenty in the left-wing press in the United States, including The Bulletin published by our co-thinkers in the US Workers League. They were also starting to get attention in Germany. Thinking we ought to publish something about this organisation and its expansion to Europe, I gathered what material we had and wrote an article.


To my surprise, our editor Alex Mitchell, who was away much of the time working on a project and series of articles called Security and the Fourth International, assisted by Dave North of the Workers League (nowadays Socialist Equality Party), came into the office looking worried, after a meeting with Gerry Healy, and said there was no way we could publish anything about Lyndon LaRouche and his organisation. By way of an explanation, he remarked that the last thing we wanted was some "LaRouchite nutter throwing a bomb into the printshop".

That made me feel I'd been irresponsible, instead of conscientious, and I did not argue. All the same, and though it was not the only time I was told something could not go in the paper, there was something odd about this. Much of what I had written had come straight from our US comrades. What's more, as part of the Security and the Fourth International campaign we had not only accused the Socialist Workers Party in the United States of harbouring FBI agents, which it did, but implied that it had a hand in the murder of Trotskyists, including Tom Henehan in the United States and even a Sri Lankan comrade. If all this was true - and I never questioned it - we were being brave and bold in publishing it, but apparently could not do the same with what we knew about the LaRouchite movement.

Anyway, my article never saw the light of day, and within a year -albeit for other reasons - I was exiled from the News Line office, ostensibly to cover the firefighters' strike in the West Midlands, and then sacked by Gerry Healy.  Thus ended my brief career as a professional journalist.

In the Autumn of 1985, Gerry Healy exited the Clapham centre in somewhat greater haste than I had, and public disgrace over his treatment of party members, particularly young women comrades. According to Alex Mitchell, and others who went with Healy, he was still a great revolutionary and the victim of an MI5 conspiracy. Former London mayor Ken Livingstone endorsed this line. Alex Mitchell returned to his native Australia to resume his journalistic career, and in a memoir published in 2012 he recalls hearing that Healy had denounced him too as an intelligence agent; but this does not seem to have inspired him to re-examine his own previous accusations.

In 1986, the Swedish prime minister Olaf Palme was assassinated, and a former member of the LaRouche organisation in Sweden, renamed European Workers Party, was arrested though later discharged as a suspect. The LaRouchites denounced efforts to throw suspicion their way, but their Swedish organisation seems to have undergone a crisis after this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Workers_Party

In recent years, despite its increasingly right-wing image and reputation for extremism, the LaRouche organisation seems to have continued acquiring wealthy and influential friends, including some in Russia and eastwards. Perhaps the investigation of Jeremiah Duggan's death will threaten to uncover a real and bigger conspiracy.

   
Who's your friend?

American fascist Lyndon LaRouche, his wife and colleague Helga-Zepp LaRouche and current Putin's aide Sergey Glazyev, then Russian parliament chairman of the Economic Affairs Committee, June 2001

Two Cases for Investigation:

Something Rotten in the State of Hesse


RAISING case in Wiesbaden. Jeremiah Duggan's parents Hugo (4th from the left) and Erica Duggan (6th from left) with friends of Jeremiah and the former member of LaRouche organisation, Yves Messer (far right).

A NORTH London mother is in Germany this weekend and due to lay flowers by a roadside outside Wiesbaden, in memory of her son whose dead body was found there eight years ago on March 27, 2003.
For Erica Duggan it will be not just an act of sad commemoration, but an occasion of bitterness, reminding people of the suspicious circumstances in which her son Jeremiah died, and of what appears like a striking reluctance by the authorities to investigate.

Jeremiah Duggan, aged 22, had been studying at the Sorbonne in Paris when, troubled by the onset of the war on Iraq, he agreed to attend what appeared to be an anti-war conference in Wiesbaden, in the German state of Hesse. What he did not know was that the organisation hosting this gathering, the culturally respectable-sounding Schiller Institute, is part of an organisation led by Lyndon LaRouche, an American one-time leftist who became notorious as a right-wing cult leader. The Institute was founded by LaRouche's German partner Helga Zepp who declared "We need a movement that can finally free Germany from the control of the Versailles and Yalta treaties, thanks to which we have staggered from one catastrophe to another for an entire century."

When Jeremiah, hearing some people at the conference appear to blame the war on Jews, he protested that he was Jewish, and must have sensed some hostility. Nevertheless he agreed to stay on for a LaRouche youth movement cadre school. But then something else must have happened, because he then called his girlfiend, and his mother, in the early hours of the morning, saying he was in 'deep trouble' and sounding terrified, appealing to be rescued.

That same morning his body was found by the road, some distance outside Wiesbaden. The story accepted by the German police was that this young man had run out into the road, and been struck by two vehicles, supposedly as a "suicide".

Erica Duggan was not having it. She found out more about the LaRouche outfit and the way it operates. She hired investigators. They found that neither of the vehicles which had supposedly hit her son bore traces of his skin or clothing. They reported that the injuries sustained by Jeremiah were more like those from a good kicking than a road accident, or deliberate suicide. There was also some sand on his jeans that was not present where he was found. Had he been in a yard or on a building site, and his body then been brought out and dumped?

Why had the police in Hesse been in such a hurry to close the case, without even witness statements, and left it to the family to make this investigation? How come they seem content to accept the word of the LaRouchites, without looking further into this organisation?

For an organisation that pretends some kind of anti-imperialist credentials, and purports to be up against all sorts of conspiracies, the LaRouchites have been strangely reluctant to countenance an investigation into the death of a young man who came to their conference. They have preferred the "suicide" theory, offering in its support allegations about "drugs", family psychological problems, and finally, a supposed conspiracy involving the Duggan family with the British government.

They even came up with the explanation that Tony Blair and others had engineered a plot against them in an attempt to divert attention from the case of scientist Dr.David Kelly. Apart from the bizarre logic - Jeremiah Duggan died three months before Kelly, and why should one have to choose between investigating one death and the other? - it isn't the LaRouchites who have raised the Kelly case. The doctors who have are represented by human rights lawyer Frances Swaine - who is also acting for the Duggans in their case!

A British enquiry found that there was no evidence to suggest suicide and deemed that Jeremiah died in a state of terror. The Duggans finally obtained a fresh inquest in London last year, but this appears to have been adjourned indefinitely pending fresh evidence which the Metropolitan Police have yet to gather.

When supporters of the Justice for Jeremiah campaign visited Wiesbaden and held a meeting they found local citizens sympathetic, and anxious to know more about the LaRouche organisation and what it was up to in their area. But LaRouche, though his group in the USA gained a notoriety for violence. and he has served time for fraud, appears to have enjoyed some 'respectable' political connections in the 'States , and his European operations with Helga Zepp seem not short of funds.

On August 5, last year, Erica Duggan took the case to the European Court of Human Rights, accusing the German police of violating Article 2, because they failed to investigate her son's death sufficiently. She pointed out that no witness statements were taken, no medical examination of injuries, no post mortem, destruction of vital evidence, and a disregard for how someone in the LaRouche organisation had Jeremiah's bloodstained passport.

In a statement last week before setting off for Wiesbaden again, Erica Duggan said:
" Germany has consistently refused to properly investigate my son's death. †I have been treated in a most heartless manner. †I have asked for the Prosecutor to see me and so have my lawyers but not only does she refuse this but she has stated that she will not investigate and has never had the time to read the files. The case is still open with suspects named but they refuse to speak and the authorities continue to cover up the facts.”

For more information go to www.justiceforjeremiah.com and www.LaRouche-danger.com
Contact Erica Duggan on justiceforjeremiah@gmail.com.
Lawyers: UK>Frances Swaine Germany Serdar Kaya & Christian Noll ; Mail@kanzlei-kaya.de Mail@christian-noll.de

Also briefings in German and English go to

http://justiceforjeremiah.yolasite.com/resources/case_outline_german_final1.pdf

http://justiceforjeremiah.yolasite.com/background-long-version.php

For transcripts of the Court Hearings in the UK go to http://justiceforjeremiah.yolasite.com/legal-action-in-britain.php



Cameron warned against complicity

Medical professionals campaigning for a full inquest into the death of government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly have appealed to David Cameron to intervene on their behalf.

Dr.Kelly's body was found in woodland near his home at Abingdon, Oxfordshire,on July 18, 2003, - two days after he was questioned by the parliamentary foreign affairs select committee. The scientist had been exposed as the source for BBC reports questioning the Blair government's case for war in Iraq, saying it had "sexed up" intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.

No inquest was ever held into his death. The Blair government appointed a former top civil servant, Lord Hutton to chair an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death, as opposed to a full inquest in a coroner's court. The Hutton report cleared the government of wrongdoing, and also left the intelligence services unscathed, while the BBC was strongly criticised, leading to the resignation of the BBC's chairman and director-general..

The inquiry found that Dr Kelly had committed suicide and took the highly irregular step of ruling that all evidence relating to the death, including post-mortem findings, be suppressed for 70 years. But several medical experts found its "suicide" story unconvincing, even after the post mortem report was released in October last year. They say the supposed method, slashing an ulnar artery after taking pills, would not have been sufficient, and that not enough blood was found at the scene.

Attorney General Dominic Grieve is currently considering a dossier of evidence provided by the doctors, and expected to announce whether he will ask the High Court to order an inquest soon.

In an open letter to David Cameron released at the weekend the doctors warned that they would seek a judicial review if Mr Grieve decides no inquest is needed.Denouncing the Hutton report as a "whitewash" which "failed adequately to address the cause of death itself and the manner of death,"they point out Lord Hutton spent only half a day of his 24-day inquiry considering the cause of Kelly's death."No coroner in the land would have reached a suicide verdict on the evidence which Lord Hutton heard," they claim.

"The coroner is required to hear evidence which constitutes proof beyond reasonable doubt that the deceased killed himself, and that he intended to kill himself, before he may return a verdict of suicide."Lord Hutton did not hear evidence which came near to satisfying that test."

The doctors said Lord Hutton's findings had clearly been "unsafe" and warned the PM that if an inquest is denied "there is a real and grave risk that your government will be seen as continuing and being complicit in an enormous conspiracy to pervert the course of justice."

(See PM's Kelly Conspiracy Warning, by Paddy McGuffin, Morning Star, March 26

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/102727

New inquest may be step towards justice for Jeremiah

THE family of a British student who died in mysterious circumstances seven years ago in Germany have been heartened to hear from Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, that she supports their case for a fresh inquest.

Jeremiah Duggan, 22, was found dead by a motorway outside Wiesbaden, on March 27, 2003 . German police concluded that he had run out into the road, and been struck by two vehicles. Jeremiah's family have never accepted that his death was either a road accident or "suicide", as the police said.

Jerry Duggan, studying in Paris, had been persuaded to go to Wiesbaden to attend what was supposed to be a youth anti-war conference, hosted by the Schiller Institute. He probably did not realise this respectable-sounding body was a front for the notorious political cult led by the American Lyndon LaRouche. But he was apparently disturbed by some delegates seeming to blame the war on Iraq on Jewish influence. So much that he rose to tell people he was Jewish.

On the night before he died Jeremiah 'phoned his girfriend and his mother, telling them he was scared.
When his body was found it was some distance from the place where he was staying. How had he got there in the early hours of the morning? And why had he run out in the road? How come his bloodstained passport was in the hands of people associated with the LaRouchites? The German police did not investigate further, and did not probe the Schiller Institute.

The Duggan family did. A former Metropolitan Police investigator working for them discovered that remarkably, Jeremiah's body had left no traces on the vehicles, nor vice versa. But there was sand on their tires and on Jerry's jeans which was not from the motorway, but might have been in somewhere like a builders' yard. There were defensive wounds to his arms, such as might be found if someone was not hit by a vehicle, but attempting to shield themselves from blows or kicks to the head.

In her letter to the family, apologising for mistakes that were made in the way they were treated, Baroness Scotland says:
“I am of the view on reconsidering your application that there is an unanswered question from the inquest into Jeremiah' s death as to whether the fatal injuries he suffered are in fact attributable to a car accident.”

The Duggan family say they will go to court seeking a further inquest to bring out the truth. " Why did our son die? The first step towards Justice has been taken. Click here for 21 Jan 2010 Press release issued by our solicitors"


Considering that Jeremiah Duggan was attending their conference when he met his death, the Schiller Institute appears to have taken no interest in investigating what happened to the young man. On the contrary, the LaRouchites put it about that Jeremiah had taken drugs, and told German police that he had been clinically depressed and attending therapy with his parents at the Tavistock Clinic in London. Together with the Tavistock Institute this often figures in American conspiracy theories about British 'brainwashing', and Jeremiah's notes from the Wiesbaden conference indicate that speakers referred to it there.

The LaRouchites have condemned attempts to investigate Jeremiah Duggan's death as a conspiracy against them, orchestrated by Tony Blair, ex-US vice president Dick Cheney and others, including no doubt Baroness Scotland.

Lyndon LaRouche began his political career on the Left. Known for a time as Lyn Marcus,he was one of the young dissidents who emerged in opposition to the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States. Others, like Jim Robertson (of the Spartacus League) and Tim Wohlforth remained part of the Left, but LaRouche went through a bizarre evolution, ending up on what most regard as the far Right. It was in the 1970s that his band of followers acquired notoriety for violent attacks on other left-wing organisations, somehow escaping attention from the law.

Next LaRouche moved into Europe, setting up organisations in Sweden, Germany, and France. One of his supporters in Sweden was arrested as a suspect in the 1986 murder of Social Democrat Prime Minister Olaf Palme, but then released and went to the United States. Besides the culturally prestigious-sounding Schiller Institute, the LaRouchites assets include the Executive Inteligence Review(EIR).
http://www.larouchepub.com/

Back in the United States, La Rouche was released from prison in 1999 after serving time for conspiracy and fraud. A dab hand at constructing conspiracy theories, his most famous placing the British Royal Family at the head of international drug trafficking, while a more recent EIR article declared "Obama's Nazi Health Bill Is British Assault on the USA". Beside the familiar charge that airline terror comes from "Londonistan", EIR is now claiming that the Duggan case was an attempt to distract attention from claims that weapons expert David Kelly was murdered to prevent him exposing the truth about Iraq and Tony Blair. Which he may well have been, though why investigating one death should prevent you investigating another, we must not ask. If a conpiracy theory requires two things be connected in a peculiar way, then don't bring logic into it, you must accept they are!

The way the LaRouchites have suddenly clutched at the David Kelly case to point the finger at Blair and away from themselves does suggest they are worried. The case for justice for Jeremiah Duggan has not gone away, and now it looks as though the family and friends might be a step closer to bringing out the truth about his death. Let's hope so. And if there are any parties with cause to worry in case the truth comes out, let us hope they are given plenty to worry about before very long.

http://www.justiceforjeremiah.com/NEW/index.htm

http://www.indopedia.org/Jeremiah_Duggan.html

Quest for truth and justice for Jeremiah Duggan

THE family of student Jeremiah Duggan have come a step nearer winning a fresh inquest into his death after a hearing in the High Court yesterday. But while agreeing there were "sufficient unusual circumstances in this case" to warrant granting permission for further proceedings, the judge, Justice Wyn Williams, declined to give an opinion, and said he was "not going to tell the Attorney General what to do".

Jerry Duggan, a north Londoner who had been studying at the Sorbonne, was found lying on a motorway outside Wiesbaden in Germany in the early hours of March 27, 2003. He had gone there to attend what he thought was an anti-war conference, organised by Lyndon LaRouche's Schiller Institute.

After Wednesday's hearing, Jerry's mum, Mrs Erica Duggan said: "What kind of justice system puts a bereaved mother in the situation of having to fight through the courts for what is my right to find out why my son died?"

German police had said Jerry Duggan had run into the path of two oncoming cars. A German coroner recorded a verdict of suicide. But no explanation was given as to why the previously happy and successful student should have decided to take his own life, or how he came to be where his body was found, some miles from where he was staying. After hearing about two phone calls Jerry made, to his mother and to his girlfriend Maya, a British coroners report said Mr Duggan was in "a state of terror" when he died. .

But in a letter on February t6 this year, the Attorney General concluded there was no prospect to order another inquest. At Wednesday's hearing, Dinah Rose, QC, counsel for the Duggan family said there were precedents for a fresh inquest to be ordered if new evidence came to light. Evidence uncovered by Erica Duggan's own inquiries might lead to the conclusion that her son's death was neither suicide nor a road traffic accident.

No witness statements had been produced, not even from the drivers of the two cars that were supposed to have hit Jerry Duggan. He was supposedly hit by a Peugeot, then run over by a VW Golf. The vehicles had been moved when police arrived on the scene. Neither vehicle appeared to have any biological traces such as skin or blood. We were not told how or why this young man apparently ran for some miles, with a full bladder (as was ascertained) before hurtling himself into the path of the cars.

The pathologist who examined Jerry Duggan's body found no evidence such as glass fragments or tire marks, such as would be expected if the young man had been hit by one vehicle and run over by another. The victim had swallowed and inhaled blood - indicating that he died after repeated blows to the head, rather than being fatally struck once by a vehicle going over it. There was bruising on the arms and hands, such as would be suffered by someone trying to defend themselves.

"Your son was severely beaten around the head," the pathologist, Dr.Schon told Erica Duggan when she went to see him. For some reason this pathologist had not been called to give evidence at the inquest, and yet the Attorney General in seeing no reason for a further inquest had not addressed this aspect.

Experts who viewed police photographs of the vehicles had said damage to the Peugeot windscreen and door was not consistent with the impact of a human body but looked more like it could have been done with a crowbar or a baseball bat. There had been broken glass on the driver's seat. But where was the driver?

In contrast to the doubtful evidence of a collision, counsel noted that wet sandy substance had been found on Jerry Duggan's trainers and jeans, and on the vehicles, but not on the road where the accident had supposedly occurred. This indicated that they could have been somewhere else.

Arguing that the Duggans were trying to reopen the case in order to point the accusation at the LaRouchites, Cecilia Ivimy, appearing for the Attorney General, said if their evidence was accepted it would lead to "incredible" conclusions. "Police and doctors attended very promptly," she said. "The police and doctors and an independent investigator found nothing odd about the scene to suggest to them this was not a traffic accident, as it appeared."

The Attorney General's representative said there was no evidence of a crowbar, or of the cars and Jeremiah Duggan having been in a builders' yard, as suggested. The police had interviewed the drivers, and there had been no evidence that the drivers had any reason to lie, or any connection with the LaRouche organisation.

Watching Mrs.Duggan listen to the grisly evidence about her son's death, as I guess she has now had to do several times, and sit patiently through the courtroom niceties and bonhomie - though she did pass detailed notes to her counsel as Ms.Ivimy was speaking - I could only admire her fortitude. Having to track down witnesses and evidence, and consult experts, when neither the German police nor British authorities seem interested, must be exhausting, but each rebuff seems to have strengthened her resolve.

I hope she perseveres, however many legal hoops she has to go through. She has many supporters - family, Jeremiah's student friends, people who have followed the case, and those who know something about American-born cult leader Lyndon LaRouche. Hopefully they will help uncover the truth. Whatever is behind the reluctance of the authorities to look further into this, it is a matter of shame.

for background and campaign news:
http://www.justiceforjeremiah.com/


Meanwhile - Tiger in a Trap? Sri Lankan in Catch 22

WHILE I was waiting for the Duggan hearing, I caught a glimpse of another little aspect of our justice system at work. The case concerned a man from Sri Lanka who was appealing against being sent back to that island.

I heard a counsel arguing that the man had only been involved at a low level with the guerrilla movement
known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam(LTTE). He had not been a guerrilla fighter, in fact he had refused to fight for them, but had dug bunkers, and provided food when they asked for it. The Sri Lankan authorities had no record of his detention, although he got out with a bribe, and had been able to leave from the airport with the help of an agent.

At first I thought this counsel must be speaking on the Tamil man's behalf, saying he was not such a bad fellow. But then the Tamil's counsel got up to argue that his client had been arrested in 1997, his fingerprints.had been taken, and there were documents on his detention. Then I realised that it had been the government's lawyer who was arguing that the man was not important enough to face any dangers if he was sent back to Sri Lanka, though he had a family member who was in the LTTE. The Tamil was apparently arrested for something else in
Britain, and served a sentence, but has since been held in an immigration detention centre and will have been there three years come January.

It struck me that if the man wanted to prove he faced danger of ill-treatment in Sri Lanka, he might have to convince the authorities here that he was really a big cheese in the LTTE, a serious combatant upon whom the
Sri Lankan authorities were determined to lay hands. Only trouble is, the LTTE is on the British Home Office's list of proscribed "terrorist" organisations, and so claiming to be a Tamil Tiger would not be such a good idea. How do you get out of that one?

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.