Death of Jeremiah Duggan

Jeremiah Duggan

Jeremiah 'Jerry' Duggan (November 10, 1980 – March 27, 2003), a British student at the University of Paris, died in disputed circumstances near Wiesbaden, Germany. His death became controversial because it occurred while he was attending a youth cadre school organized by the Schiller Institute and the LaRouche Youth Movement, part of an international organization led by perennial American presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche and his wife Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

The German police ruled that Duggan's death was a suicide, based on initial claims that he was struck by two vehicles while running down a busy road. A British inquest rejected a suicide verdict after hearing the Schiller Institute described by the London Metropolitan Police as a "political cult with sinister and dangerous connections." In March 2007, reports by forensic pathologists retained by attorneys for Duggan's mother were released, suggesting there was "no evidence that he had been struck by a vehicle," and that he "was battered to death with a blunt instrument as he tried desperately to defend himself."

Labour peer Lord Janner of Braunstone has asked the British attorney general to order a second inquest. Baroness Ludford MEP has requested that the German government reopen the case and has said she may request the formal intervention of the European Parliament. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has asked the German justice minister to hold an enquiry to determine whether Duggan's being Jewish played a role in his death, in light of his lecture notes, which the London Metropolitan Police say showed the "antisemitic nature" of the LaRouche ideology. The Center also asked the minister "to impose the full application of German law to the supervision of the Larouche Youth Movement and its network of affiliates."

A spokesman for the German public prosecution service has suggested that the murder theories have developed because Duggan's mother cannot accept that her son committed suicide. Lyndon LaRouche has written that the allegations are an "obvious fabrication" constructed by supporters of Tony Blair, Dick Cheney, and Al Gore to discredit him over his opposition to the invasion of Iraq and his criticism of what he calls the "global warming swindle."

Background

Duggan's early life and education

Duggan was born in London, the son of Hugo, who is Irish, and Erica, who is Jewish. He attended Christ's Hospital School in Horsham, Sussex. After leaving school, he spent some time in Israel. In 2001, he moved to Paris to study French at the British Institute, part of the University of London, and subsequently began a degree in English literature at the University of Paris (Sorbonne).

The LaRouche movement

Lyndon LaRouche addressed the conference Duggan attended.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Main articles: LaRouche movement, LaRouche Youth Movement, and Schiller Institute

Lyndon LaRouche and his German-born wife Helga Zepp-LaRouche run a global political movement from their bases in Leesburg, Virginia, and Wiesbaden, Germany. The group is widely seen as a fringe political cult. LaRouche was released from jail in 1994 after serving five years of a 15-year sentence for conspiracy, mail fraud, and tax code violations.

The movement consists of an interlocking network of think tanks, magazines and newspapers, national and international political organizations, a political action committee, and a youth cadre. It teaches that LaRouche is a central figure of international political and cultural importance, and that political activism on his behalf might save the world from an imminent global crisis. The movement has been associated in the mainstream media with violence against its political opponents, antisemitism, fraudulent use of political donations, aggressive recruiting techniques, and the dissemination of political conspiracy theories.

In Germany, the group has a think-tank, the Schiller Institute, and has founded a series of parties including the Europäische Arbeiterpartei, and Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität (BüSo). According to the Berliner Zeitung, it has a core following of about 300 in that country, and "next to Scientology, is the cult soliciting most aggressively in German streets at this time."

LaRouche is particularly critical of Britain. He has accused British intelligence of being involved in global brainwashing, has said the Queen is involved in drug-dealing, and in 1999 accused advisors to the British royal family of threatening to assassinate him.

The movement's members insist the allegations against it are misrepresentations, and that LaRouche is a brilliant and widely misunderstood leader. Regarding the allegation of antisemitism, LaRouche writes: "Religious and racial hatred, such as anti-Semitism, or hatred against Islam, or, hatred of Christians, is, on record of known history, the most evil expression of criminality to be seen on the planet today."

Duggan's introduction to the LaRouche movement

First contact

Jacques Cheminade runs Solidarité et Progrès, the LaRouche political party in France.

Duggan's first contact with the LaRouche movement was when he bought a newspaper in a Paris street in early 2003 from Benoit Chalifoux, the editor of Nouvelle Solidarité. The newspaper is published by Solidarité et Progrès, the LaRouche movement's political party in France, which is chaired by Jacques Cheminade.

Chalifoux befriended Duggan and started teaching him about international politics, according to Duggan's telephone calls to his parents, then invited him to a three-day Schiller Institute conference in Wiesbaden. Duggan and Chalifoux travelled there together on March 21, 2003 with eight other LaRouche members in a convoy of cars. In Wiesbaden, Duggan was given a place to sleep in an apartment belonging to Schiller Institute managers Rainer and Ursula Apel.

Conference and cadre school

Duggan said in telephone calls to his parents and his French girlfriend that he found the Schiller Institute "extreme," but the conference stimulating. Lyndon LaRouche himself was the keynote speaker.

The Washington Post reports that the mood of the conference was "apocalyptic." LaRouche called President Bush an "unreformed drunk." He said corruption in the White House was "pervasive and long-standing," and that Woodrow Wilson had formed the Ku Klux Klan from there. President John F. Kennedy "was killed by a special operation, inside our country, called the Special Warfare Section, which does these kinds of things." The U.S. was using the war in Iraq to ignite global warfare, and the Bush administration was "totally committed to worldwide fascist imperialism." The global warfare plot had been influenced by people who "being Jewish ... couldn't qualify for Nazi Party leadership, even though their fascism was absolutely pure! As extreme as Hitler! They sent them to the United States."

"So, is Israel behind this?" LaRouche asked. "No. Israel is a hand grenade being thrown at the Arab world ... George Bush hasn't got the brains to be behind it. Who's behind it? ... The independent central-banking-system crowd, the slime-mold. The financier interests. The same people who brought Hitler to power in 1930."

The Post writes that LaRouche told his audience not to trust their own thoughts and that they had to be retrained to recognize the truth. "Don't trust your own independent thinking. You probably don't have any independent thinking. But you delude yourself that you do." Duggan's parents found their son's lecture notes in his suitcase after his death; he had written "Question your own false assumptions." According to the London Metropolitan Police, the notes showed the antisemitic nature of the LaRouche ideology.

Duggan's mother told a reporter that Dr. Jonathan Tennenbaum, a senior member of the Schiller Institute, told her that "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!'" According to the Berliner Zeitung, another participant said that this marked him out. They "really put Jeremiah through the wringer for that," the witness said.

File:LYM.jpg

Members of the LaRouche Youth Movement singing Bach.

After the conference, Duggan decided to attend a LaRouche movement cadre school with about fifty others in a nearby youth hostel. One participant later told his mother that he had rubbed the organizers up the wrong way, in part because he had declared he was Jewish. A participant also said he had told organizers that he had undergone family therapy at the Tavistock Clinic in London when he was seven years old during his parents' divorce. The LaRouche movement believes that the related Tavistock Institute is involved with British intelligence and is a "brainwashing center."

The Berliner Zeitung writes that LaRouche remained in Wiesbaden after the conference. The newspaper says that Duggan represented all three of LaRouche's fears of who his enemies are, and indeed of who might one day kill him: the British, the Jews, and people brainwashed by the Tavistock. "[T]hroughout his life, Lyndon LaRouche has been afraid of Jews, "psychos", and the British. He has warned his disciples that those circles would send their brainwashed zombies to kill him, the world's saviour. His paranoid perceptions seem to fit exactly with someone who had the bad luck to be in the same place [as LaRouche] during those days: Jeremiah — British, Jewish, possibly a "psycho" agent."

Duggan's death

Telephone calls

The Berliner Zeitung reports that the day or so before his death, Duggan told another cadre school participant: "I don't trust LaRouche any longer," and allegedly sounded "totally shaken."

At around 4:15 a.m. on Thursday, March 27, Duggan telephoned his girlfriend, Maya, in France. In a statement to Scotland Yard, 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. Maya told the BBC's Newsnight:

He was talking very quietly. He said that they were doing experiments on humans with computers. The way he spoke was very agitated. He couldn't string a sentence together properly. I asked him who was doing these experiments, and he said the government. He said they were causing lots of pain to their arms and legs. I tried to find out where he was, but he wouldn't say.

Duggan next 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." She told him she loved him. At this, he shouted, "I want to see you now," and began to spell out the name of the town he was in. At that point, the line went dead again.

The Berliner Straße

Forty-five minutes later, Duggan ran out on to the Berliner Straße, or B-445, a busy road in the Wiesbaden suburb of Erbenheim, near the LaRouche headquarters, and five kilometers from the apartment where he had been staying. According to the Daily Mail, four drivers told the police that Duggan had run into the road in front of them. The British inquest heard that he was hit by one car, but continued running along the road for another kilometer. The inquest was told that a second car knocked him down, then a third car ran over him.

He was initially believed to have sustained fatal head injuries as a result of being hit by the cars. The second driver who, the court was told, had hit him, said Duggan ran toward the car with his arms outstretched and his mouth open. The German police allegedly undertook no forensic examination or extensive interview of witnesses, and decided it was a suicide within three hours of the death. His body was transferred to the UK where blood samples showed no trace of alcohol or drugs.

After Duggan's death, German police found that a senior Schiller Institute manager, Ortrun Cramer, was in possession of Duggan's passport. One of the issues the family wants to resolve is when and why this came into Cramer's possession.

According to the Berliner Zeitung, one of the cadre school's participants has given a statement saying that the other participants were assembled in the LaRouche movement's offices in Erbenheim the day after Duggan died. They were "sworn in on the suicide hypothesis," the newspaper writes. One of the movement's "most fanatical recruiters" is alleged to have said: "Jeremiah was brainwashed, and therefore represented a danger to the organization. No one should reproach themselves over his death."

The investigation

Recruitment allegation

Duggan's mother said initially that Duggan had been the victim of a recruiting technique known as "ego stripping," in which recruits are made to doubt all their basic beliefs, and which psychiatrists believe can lead to a mental breakdown. Nikolas Becker, who represented former East German leader Erich Honecker, is one of the Duggan family's lawyers. He told a British newspaper: "There is enough evidence [Duggan] was probably in a hopeless psychotic situation [when he died] and there is no evidence that there was any mental illness in his family. It is known these kind of organizations produce this kind of psychotic breakdown."

The inquest

The German police initially pronounced Duggan's death a suicide. The British inquest held in London in November 2003 concluded there was nothing in the police report or in Duggan's background that suggested suicide, including no history of mental illness.

The court heard that a Scotland Yard (London Metropolitan Police) report described the LaRouche movement as "a political cult with sinister and dangerous connections." The British psychiatrist who studied Duggan's medical history for the court also submitted a paper describing a severe stress reaction that can be caused by a rapid change in a person's belief system. Summing up, Coroner Dr. William Dolman said:

What was it, we ask ourselves, that turned a stable and apparently happy young man with a stable relationship, what was it that turned that young man into a terrified young man? We know that the weekend before he'd had friendly conversations with his girlfriend on the phone, that was five days before his death. What was it that impelled him to make a phone call in the early hours at 4.20 a.m in the morning on the day of his death? Then phone his mother an hour later. There is no doubt that there had been a huge change. What was he frightened of? What was he scared of, indeed terrified of? Was he scared of what might happen to him? Sadly we might never know what it was, but something had happened that made him run away from the house into the road.

Dolman then said he would deliver a narrative verdict. This is unusual in British courts, where coroners' verdicts are normally terse and formal:

Jeremiah Joseph Duggan received fatal head injuries when he ran into the road in Wiesbaden and was hit by two private motor cars. What other fact do we know that I must add? 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.

Call for a second inquest and a new inquiry

German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries has been asked by the Simon Wiesenthal Center to reopen the police investigation.

In July 2006, Erica Duggan's lawyers in the UK, Leigh Day & Co, asked the British attorney general to order a second inquest. They say that new evidence from former Metropolitan Police forensic photographer Paul Canning indicates that Duggan may have lost his life elsewhere before being placed at the scene. They say that there were no traces of skin, hair, blood, or clothing on the vehicles that allegedly hit him, or on the road. They also say there were no tyre marks. Canning studied 79 photographs taken at the scene, and reported that the damage to the cars was not consistent with them hitting a human body. He suggested that one of the cars was hit with a hammer or crowbar "to make it look as though it had run someone over," according to the Daily Mail.

In October 2006, Erica Duggan filed a complaint with the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, alleging a breach of fundamental rights on the grounds that Duggan's death was not properly investigated and that Erica Duggan's subsequent submissions were ignored.

Dr. Shimon Samuels, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Director of International Relations in Paris, wrote to Brigitte Zypries, the German Justice Minister, in November 2006, asking that the German police investigation be re-opened, and noted "the many messages of concern from our membership regarding seminars held at the Schiller Institute in Wiesbaden and the activities in Germany of its parent body, the Larouche organization." The letter added that "these expressions of apprehension came, particularly, from parents of students recruited internationally to the so-called Larouche Youth Movement."

Samuels wrote of the conference Duggan attended: "Ostensibly, this was a seminar on the Iraq war but Jeremiah's lecture-notes, found in his bag after his death, apparently point to stereotyping and antisemitic conspiracy theories to explain the background to that war and other global problems." Samuels asked the minister, "on this 68th anniversary of 'Kristallnacht', the prelude to the Holocaust and, ironically, Jeremiah Duggan's posthumous birthday ... [to] ensure total transparency in the resolution of this enquiry."

New forensic reports

In March 2007, The Observer reported that Erica Duggan's lawyers had commissioned two reports from leading forensic pathologists, which concluded that Duggan was "battered to death with a blunt instrument as he tried desperately to defend himself." The pathologists found no trace of tyre marks on his body or any other evidence that he had been struck by a car. The reports say there were "defence wounds" on Duggan's arms and hands, which The Observer says usually suggest the victim was trying to protect himself. Duggan's head injuries are reportedly consistent with being beaten and, according to the two reports, "exclude any possibility that the injuries to his head occurred because a motor vehicle ran over the body."

According to The Observer, both reports are "unanimous in rejecting the official account that Duggan was struck by two vehicles on the night he died in March 2003." The pathologists also found that Duggan had "ingested quantities of blood." That he survived long enough to swallow his own blood suggests that he took a long time to die, reports The Observer, rather than dying instantly after being hit by a car traveling at 60 mph. The Berliner Zeitung reports that a DNA analysis of brown spots on Duggan's passport showed that they were samples of blood from Duggan and from one other unknown person.

Response

German prosecutors' response

A spokesman for the Wiesbaden prosecutor's office responded that there is no need to re-open the investigation, according to the Daily Mail. "This was a cut and dried suicide," he said. On April 19, 2007, the Wiesbadener Kurier wrote that "[f]our years after the suicide of British citizen Jeremiah Duggan, which was established beyond doubt, fables are being cultivated. A murder story is circulating. The British media in particular are accusing the German prosecution service."

The Kurier quoted Harmut Ferse, spokesman for the German public prosecution service, as sighing deeply in response to the claim that Duggan may have lost his life elsewhere before being placed at the scene. Ferse told the newspaper that the murder theory has developed because Duggan's mother is unable to accept that her son committed suicide.

LaRouche movement response

A spokesman for the LaRouche movement denied the Schiller Institute was involved in Duggan's death, and has suggested that he was suffering from a mental illness. In a June 2004 article in the organization's weekly news magazine, Executive Intelligence Review, Larouche's director of counter-intelligence, Jeffrey Steinberg, wrote that Duggan had told his conference room-mates he had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), an illness that Steinberg alleged can induce schizophrenic behavior, including paranoia.

Steinberg wrote that Duggan had shown signs of emotional stress the day before his death, and had fled from the apartment where he was staying at 3:30 in the morning. On the Sunday prior to his death, according to Steinberg, Duggan had tried to find a pharmacy where he could obtain prescription drugs. After he went missing on the morning of his death, a LaRouche Youth Movement organizer telephoned Duggan's girlfriend in Paris to ask whether she had heard from him. She is alleged to have asked, in what Steinberg called a cynical tone, "Is there a river nearby?", implying that Duggan was already known to have suicidal tendencies. However, the girlfriend has told reporters she asked this because she was trying to find Wiesbaden on a map.

Steinberg also wrote that Duggan had attended group counseling sessions with his parents at the Tavistock Clinic when Duggan was seven years old and his parents were divorcing.

Steinberg said that, after Duggan's death, Mrs. Duggan met with representatives of the Schiller Institute in what Steinberg described as a "sympathetic" meeting. He wrote that Mrs. Duggan's attitude changed only after British minister Elizabeth Symons intervened in the affair on behalf of the British Foreign Office. According to Steinberg, Symons is a member of what the LaRouche movement calls the "trans-Atlantic network" that seeks to damage LaRouche because of his opposition to what it calls the Blair-Cheney Iraq War.

In November 2006, LaRouche issued a statement saying that the allegations were a "hoax" stemming from a campaign against him orchestrated by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President of the United States, and Cheney's wife, Lynne. In March 2007, he said the campaign was led by the "British Fabian friends of Dick Cheney and Al Gore" and was aimed at discrediting him over his opposition to the Iraq war and his criticism of the man-made global warming hypothesis.

Popular media

The British band Starsailor have written a song about him, called "Jeremiah," which is included on their latest album On The Outside.

Notes

References

• Website of Starsailor, includes the lyrics of "Jeremiah," a song about Duggan.
• "Wiesenthal Centre Appeals to German Justice Minister: "Reopen Investigation into Death of Jewish Student Attending Larouche Movement Seminar on Iraq War", Simon Weisenthal Center, November 10, 2006.
• Berlet, Chip. "Protocols to the Left, Protocols to the Right: Conspiracism in American Political Discourse at the Turn of the Second Millennium," (dedicated to Jeremiah Duggan), paper presented at the conference: Reconsidering "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion": 100 Years After the Forgery, The Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University, October 30-31, 2005.
• Berlet, Chip. "Lyndon LaRouche: Fascist Demagogue, LaRouche's Antisemitic Conspiracism, Public Eye, undated, retrieved February 16, 2005
• Duggan, Erica. Coroner's summing up, Justice for Jeremiah website, undated, retrieved February 16, 2005.
• Duggan, Erica. "Conversation with Jonathan Tennenbaum", Justice for Jeremiah website, undated, retrieved February 16, 2005.
• Foggo, Daniel. "German police probe into British student's death was 'inadequate'", The Daily Telegraph, March 26, 2007.
• Gilbert, Helen. Lyndon LaRouche: Fascism restyled for the new Millennium, Red Letter Press, 2003. ISBN 0-932323-21-9
• Kirkby, Terry. "The Lost Boy", The Independent, August 28, 2003.
• King, Dennis. "The Great Manchurian Candidate Scare", Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, chapter 4, Doubleday, 1999.
• LaRouche, Lyndon H. "Cheney Behind Press Campaign, Duggan Hoax Rewarmed Again", November 8, 2006.
• Ludford, Sarah. "London MEP urges investigation of Jeremiah Duggan's death", website of Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP, April 12, 2005.
• Mintz, John. "Ideological Odyssey: From Old Left to Far Right", Washington Post, 1985.
• Muir, Hugh. "British student did not commit suicide", The Guardian, November 5, 2003.
• Nordhausen, Frank. "A Mother's Investigations," Berliner Zeitung, April 4, 2007, page 3.
• Samuels, Tim. "Jeremiah Duggan and Lyndon LaRouche," Newsnight, BBC, 2006; date unknown, possibly November 28, 2006.
• Steinberg, Jeffrey. "The Bizarre Case of Baroness Symons", Executive Intelligence Review, June 25, 2004.
• Townsend, Mark. "The student, the shadowy cult and a mother's fight for justice", The Observer, October 31, 2004.
• Mark Townsend and Jamie Doward. "New evidence shows 'suicide' student was beaten to death", The Observer, March 25, 2007.
• Witt, April. "No Joke", The Washington Post, October 24, 2004.

Further reading

• The Justice for Jeremiah website
• "Lyndon LaRouche and Jeremiah Duggan", television report in German, YouTube.
• Duggan Hoax Rewarmed Again, statement by LaRouche
• "Jeremiah Duggan: suspicious death abroad", Leigh Day & Co, lawyers for Erica Duggan.
• Video of BBC report on Duggan's death (warning: download).
• Woman's Hour interview with Erica Duggan, BBC Radio 4, November 29, 2004.
• "Mother to get Foreign Office help", BBC News, April 1, 2004.
• Copy of the LaRouche The Campaigner, 1973, (warning:download).
• Information about LaRouche, Cults on Campus
• The Schiller Institute website
• The LaRouche Youth Movement website
• "Media locusts do dirty work for Cheney, Gore and Blair", LaRouche political action committee.
• Berlet, Chip and Bellman, Joel. "Lyndon LaRouche: Fascism Wrapped in an American Flag", Political Research Associates, 1989.
• Berlet, Chip and Lyons, Matthew N. section on LaRouche from Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. New York: Guilford Press, 2000.
• Berlet, Chip. Statement Presented to British Coroner’s Inquest, Political Research Associates, a research paper prepared at the request of Erica Duggan, with expanded footnotes.
• Fraser, Clara. LaRouche: Sex Maniac & Demagogue.
• Ireland, Joe. "Who is Lyndon LaRouche?". Portland State University Vanguard, May 13, 2004.
• King, Dennis. The 12-part Our Town series on LaRouche's movement.
• Kirkby, Terry. "The Cult and the Candidate", The Independent, July 21, 2004.
• LaRouche, Lyndon. "New Pamphlet to Document Cult Origins of Zionism," New Solidarity, December 8, 1978. ISBN 0-385-23880-0
• LaRouche, Lyndon. The Sexual Impotence of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, published under the byline of Lyn Marcus, 1973.
• LaRouche, Lyndon. Beyond Psychoanalysis, published under the byline of Lyn Marcus, 1973.
• Midgley, Carol. "Student died in terror of cult", The Times, November 07, 2003.
• Steinberg, Jeffrey et al. Dope, Inc.: Britain’s Opium War against the U.S., New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1978. On the Protocols, see pp. 31-33; on the Rothschilds, see the chart on pp. 154-155, consult index for more than 20 page entries on the Rothschilds.
• Wohlforth, Tim. "A '60's Socialist Takes a Hard Right", undated.