Jeremiah Joseph Duggan (10 November 1980 – 27 March 2003) was a British student in Paris who died during a visit to Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany, after being struck by several motorists on a dual carriageway. The circumstances of Duggan's death became a matter of dispute because, at the time he died, he was attending a youth "cadre" school organised by the LaRouche movement, an international network led by the American political activist Lyndon LaRouche.
German police concluded that Duggan had committed suicide after running several kilometres (miles) from the apartment in which he had been staying, then jumping in front of early-morning traffic. A British coroner rejected a suicide verdict in 2003 after hearing the London Metropolitan Police describe the LaRouche movement as a political cult. Duggan telephoned his mother, Erica Duggan, fifty minutes before he died, apparently distressed about his involvement in it.
Arguing that German police had not investigated the case thoroughly, Erica Duggan commissioned forensic reports which suggested the car crash might have been staged and that Duggan had died elsewhere. After protracted litigation in the UK and Germany, the High Court in London ordered a second inquest in 2010, and in 2012 the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court ordered the Wiesbaden police to reopen their investigation. In 2015 the coroner upheld that Duggan had been killed in the accident, but rejected a suicide verdict, adding that unexplained injuries suggested an "altercation at some stage before his death."
The LaRouche movement attributed criticism of its involvement in the case to LaRouche's political opponents, including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and former US Vice President Dick Cheney, who they say sought to discredit LaRouche over his opposition to the 2003 Iraq War and his criticism of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming.
Background
Duggan family
Jeremiah Duggan was born in North London to Erica Duggan, a Jewish schoolteacher from South Africa; and her husband, Hugo Duggan, who was raised in Ireland. Erica's father left Berlin in 1933; many family members were killed during the Holocaust. Erica in turn left South Africa due to apartheid. She, Hugo, Jeremiah and his two older sisters made their home in the London suburb of Golders Green. Duggan's parents divorced when he was aged 7.
Duggan attended Fitzjohn's Primary School in Hampstead, Quainton School for Boys, and won a scholarship to Christ's Hospital school in Sussex as a boarder. After his A-levels, he spent time in India then trained in Israel as a youth leader. Duggan was interested in the arts, music and the theatre, and in 2001 moved to Paris to study French at the British Institute and English at the Sorbonne. Duggan's mother said he became interested in politics after 9/11; his strong opposition to the Iraq War led him to become involved with the LaRouche movement.
LaRouche movement
Lyndon LaRouche and his German wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, ran a global political network of publications, committees and a youth cadre based in Leesburg, Virginia, United States, and in Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany. The movement in Germany is represented by the Schiller Institute and the Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität party. LaRouche stood as a presidential candidate in the US eight times between 1976 and 2004. He was jailed in 1989 for conspiracy to commit fraud, a prosecution he claimed was politically motivated.
From the 1970s the movement became associated with the promotion of conspiracy theories, and at times with the use of violence against opponents, the fraudulent use of donations, and antisemitism. There was criticism of its recruitment methods; according to The Sunday Times, recruits were isolated from their families, encouraged to give up their studies, and subjected to intense verbal pressure before being asked to accept the LaRouche worldview. Members said the allegations were misrepresentations, and LaRouche strongly denied the charge of antisemitism.
LaRouche was particularly critical of Britain and of the Tavistock Institute in London, a psychotherapy and social sciences charity that the movement associated with British intelligence. In 1999 a LaRouche publication claimed Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) was threatening to assassinate LaRouche, probably with backing from the British royal family. Duggan's family came to believe that this worldview affected the movement's perception of Duggan when the conference participants learned that he was a British Jew who, as a child, had attended the Tavistock Clinic for counselling when his parents divorced.