Jeremiah Duggan, 1980-2003. He stood up in a LaRouche cult brainwashing session to protest the rampant anti-Semitism, proclaiming "But I'm a Jew!" That may have sealed his fate.
1. Transcript of Nov. 5, 2008 proceeding before the U.K. High Court re Erika Duggan's request for a fresh inquiry into the death of her son Jeremiah. This transcript, posted here for the first time, includes the most comprehensive description publicly available of the forensic experts' reports obtained by the Duggan family.
The hearing transcript (paragraphs 137-41) includes an excerpt from the report of forensic medical specialist Dr. Ivica Milosavljevic, one of several experts whose findings were presented in argument before Mr. Justice Wyn Williams. (Dr. Milosavljevic had based his analysis on the photographic record and on the April 4, 2003 report of Dr. David Shove, the pathologist who performed a non-forensic post-mortem on the body after it was shipped back to the United Kingdom.)
"In the report of the performed autopsy, Dr Shove has established abundant quantity of fresh blood in all respiration tracts, as well as numerous bruises of the surface of both lungs. Such a finding is pathonemonic, ie indicates directly the aspiration, inhaling, of a large quantity of blood in both lungs to the level of alveoli and is most probably the direct consequence of hemorrhage from the hurt blood vessels around the fracture of bones of basis of the skull and bones of the face. It also indicates the fact that the death of Jeremiah Duggan was not instant, which should be expected from an injury of head made by overrunning....
"But that late Duggan lived for some time, few minutes, ie that injury of the head did not arise at once overrunning by motor vehicle but by multiple action of some other mechanical force. This claim is more corroborated by the fact also from the autopsy report by Dr Shove that in the stomach of the victim there was also found an abundant quantity of blood, which is the consequence of swallowing the blood, which had merged from hurt blood vessels around the fracture of the bones, the basis of the skull, the bones of the face, round towards the mouth and respiratory organs.
"Also in the above mentioned autopsy report, Dr Shove has found the presence of numerous contusions on both hands and on the back side of both forearms. The shape, volume, localisation and symmetric pattern of these injuries on both arms clearly indicate their defensive character...these injuries have been inflicted most probably by multiple actions of the blunt side of a mechanical tool (fists, feet with shoes on, and similar object) brandished onto the surface of both hands and hand sizes of both forearms ...at the moment, when those parts of the body were in an elevated position in the level of the head aiming to protect it from action of the above mentioned blunt side of a mechanical tool brandished."
The response of the Attorney General's office evaded the above points and simply repeated the German police's position, which was based on a snap judgment made within hours of Jeremiah's death that he was just a suicide, and that no criminal investigation was necessary. The AG's counsel even tried to dismiss the LaRouche issue by asking: "What is the purpose of the inquest, could it allay suspicions or rumours about the involvement of the LaRouche organisation and its members in the time leading up to his death?" What "suspicions or rumors"? Even the LaRouchians and their German police protectors don't deny that Jeremiah attended the Schiller Institute conference in Bad Schwalbach in March 2003 and went on to participate in a LaRouchian cadre school in Wiesbaden immediately thereafter. (His parents even have the handwritten notes he took during these sessions.)
Lest the LaRouchians on Wikipedia and elsewhere on the web try to debunk Mrs. Duggan's request for a fresh inquest by quoting from the Attorney General's arguments, I note the following:
First: Justice Williams found for claimant Duggan: "I consider that there are formidable legal difficulties which face the claimant in her quest to succeed in a judicial review....But I have been persuaded that there are sufficiently unusual features about this case that it would be wrong to refuse permission."
Second: According to a March 26, 2009 press release from Mrs. Duggan's attorneys, "In December 2008 [the month following the proceeding described above--DK] the Attorney General, while preparing her evidence for the case, became aware that she had not fully considered some documents received from the German Authorities before refusing our client permission to ask the Court for a second inquest. The Attorney General had had these documents in her possession prior to making her decision in February 2008 [eight months before the High Court proceeding]....Both we and our client are alarmed that it took the Attorney General until well into the Court proceedings to realise her omission."
Third: The LaRouche propagandists on Wikipedia and elsewhere on the Internet hide behind "user names," but no one in the organization is known to have medical training or any scientific knowledge of forensic science or of crime-scene or accident-scene investigation or trace-evidence chemistry. This should be contrasted with the qualifications of the experts whose reports were cited by Mrs. Duggan's attorneys in their "skeleton argument" presented to the High Court.
Fourth: The LaRouche propagandists cannot muster any scientific evidence to support their negative opinion of the findings of the forensic experts cited by Mrs. Duggan's attorneys. This is because there is no contrary scientific evidence at this point--the German police never performed a post-mortem and therefore never formulated any opinion one way or the other about, say, the evidence of defensive bruises on Jeremiah's arms and of his having sustained severe blows to the head that could not have come from the alleged impact with the cars. Indeed, the only way the German police could formulate a counter-explanation of these findings would be by reopening this case as a criminal investigation, which they adamantly refuse to do. Thus the sole response available to the LaRouchians, the German government and the U.K.'s Deutschland-uber-Duggan Attorney General is to mindlessly repeat the initial opinion formulated by Wiesbaden police investigators within hours of Jeremiah's death and adhered to by them ever since in spite of subsequent findings that raise the most serious doubts about the initial rush to judgment.
One would think that if the LaRouchians were really innocent of any involvement in Jeremiah's death, as they claim--and if the evidence of foul play were really as insignificant as they say it is--they would welcome a full inquiry in expectation of total exoneration. But instead, they are completely opposed to any fresh examination of this case either by the U.K. authorities, the German authorities or the media. I wish that at least one of LaRouche's internet trolls who love to heap ridicule on Jeremiah's mom while portraying Jeremiah himself as just a crazy person (they say he liked to "run around in traffic") would answer this simple question: Why, if your movement has nothing to hide, are you so adamantly against any further investigation of the circumstances surrounding Jeremiah's death?
2. Erica Duggan's appeal to the U.K. High Court of Justice for a fresh inquest into the death of her son Jeremiah. This "skeleton argument" filed by Mrs. Duggan's counsel last year, appears here for the first time on the web. It includes details of reports by independent forensic experts that contradict the cursory official findings of the German police, who claim that Jeremiah committed suicide by running into traffic on a Wiesbaden motorway shortly after dawn on March 27, 2003, thus causing himself to be hit by one car and then to be run over by another.
Among other items, the skeleton argument includes an excerpt from a 2005 report prepared by forensic scene examiner Allan John Bayle, who is described as "an independent forensic scientist of 30 years experience, formerly of the [London] Metropolitan police." From the conclusion of Mr. Bayle's report:
"The Blue Volkswagen Golf car showed no evidence of hitting Mr Duggan, although there was damage to the front bumper, there were no fibres, hairs, blood or skin or any other evidence to prove that this car was involved in an accident."
"The red / brown Peugeot 406 Estate car had considerable damage."
"The windscreen had been hit several times with an instrument, possibly a crow bar or something similar. There was also no evidence of any fibres, hairs, blood or skin on the broken glass."
"The offside driver's door had also been hit with probably the same instrument...The dent in the side of the door was too sharp and pointed and therefore, could not have been made by the human body."
"Mr Duggan and the two cars were together in another place, possibly a builder's yard."
"I could not find any physical evidence to show that these two vehicles ever came into contact with Mr Duggan. There appeared to be no tyre marks on Mr Duggan or on his clothing."
"The pathologist's report was very short and did not explain the lack of injuries consistent with a traffic accident."
"I firmly believe this incident was stage managed and Mr Duggan met his death somewhere else and the body dumped in its position on the road."
And here's an excerpt from the report of forensic examiner Terence Merston (also ex-Metropolitan police), who visited the scene of Jeremiah's death as well as viewing the photographs.
"Based on my years of experience in attending thousands of crime scenes as a forensic scene examiner, it is my opinion that the evidence at the scene points towards Jeremiah's death being extremely suspicious and not a road traffic accident, it is also my view that the damage to the Peugeot car has been deliberately caused."
"The alleged damage to the Volkswagen car (light lens missing and piece of metal hanging down), together with a total lack of physical evidence from Jeremiah on the vehicle and vice versa, it is total[ly] inconsistent with that vehicle having been involved in the alleged accident."
And a third statement, from forensic scientist and engineer Herr Manfred Tuve:
"...the head injuries cannot be matched to the damage to the right-hand side of the Peugeot."
"No drag marks attributable to movement from the right-hand side of the left-hand lane to the left-hand edge of the carriageway were observed on the road surface near the final position of the body. No adhesions of blood or hair were found on the Golf. These would necessarily have been detectable if the deceased had collided with or been run over by the car and if this had caused the severe head injuries, as alleged. What caused the head injuries therefore remains an open question."
"There are mud-coloured stains and adhesions on the Peugeot, the Golf and the clothing of the deceased, particularly on his shoes. These are not normal grey-black road dust, which is a mixture of different soils, road grit and abraded rubber. Since all three objects can be assigned to a single causal group, it can at least be concluded that they come from a common location."
Mrs. Duggan had originally applied to the U.K. Attorney General (Baroness Scotland) for a new inquest. After her request was denied (possibly under pressure from British security authorities doing a favor for their German colleagues--who don't want their dealings with the fascist LaRouche org to be made public), Mrs. Duggan took her case to the High Court. The Attorney General's office replied (basing itself on outdated case law), that its denial of her request was immune from judicial review. The High Court, however, disagreed--and granted permission for a judicial review to proceed.
In March 2009, Mrs. Duggan's attorneys issued a press release stating that "[t]he Attorney General has now agreed to withdraw her refusal and to promptly reconsider our client's application for permission to ask the Court for a fresh inquest." However, as of Nov. 2009 the AG is still stonewalling Mrs. Duggan on the inquest issue.
Just what has the LaRouche organization been up to in Germany and elsewhere in Europe that would require a coverup of the type that has unfolded over the past six and a half years? The suspicious official maneuverings date back to the earliest days after Jeremiah's death, when the police in Wiesbaden declined to investigate any possible involvement by LaRouche's Schiller Institute (one investigator even described the outfit to Mrs. Duggan as a "respected" local organization), failed to take written statements from the drivers whose cars allegedly had struck Jeremiah, neglected to perform a post-mortem, and even destroyed Jeremiah's clothes (which may have borne trace evidence of a brutal beating) without seeking permission from the family. Subsequently, the German authorities would simply ignore a DNA test which confirmed that Jeremiah's passport (which was not on his body when it was found on the highway but rather in the possession of the Schiller Institute) had his blood on it.
If the coverup ever begins to unravel, it will bring increased scrutiny on the LaRouche organization and its sinister network of alliances. We may then find out why more than one NATO intelligence/counterintelligence service feels it has to protect this gang of thugs. I suspect the motive has to do with at least one covert operation that went south in the 1980s with disastrous results. (The moral of the story, for the agencies I'm referring to, is that if you lie down with dogs such as LaRouche and his psychopathic followers, you're inevitably going to get fleas.)
A number of high-level ex-LaRouchians, both in Germany and the United States, know pieces of the puzzle that could help expose the German government's motives and win justice for the Duggan family. But these former close associates of LaRouche, although they love to whine about how they were personally exploited and abused by him, remain quiet about the organization's secret alliances and crimes--not only out of fear but also, in too many cases, because they really don't believe there was anything wrong with the group's ideology and deeds. The only problem, in the view of certain of these former inner-ring members, was LaRouche himself--and especially his self-defeating personality traits that prevented the group from achieving its full potential in the political arena.
Such individuals--especially those formerly in the German branch of the movement--are proud of what they did, and will (like old SS and NKVD officers) take the LaRouche org's secrets to their graves unless lower-level former members, who do feel a modicum of remorse, start putting pressure on them. I must say I'm not holding my breath.
Here are links to news coverage of the Nov. 2008 High Court hearing (ignored by the U.S. media even though the German LaRouche org is controlled and funded from the United States) and other background information:
"High court grants mother new inquest," Times-Series (London), Nov. 6, 2008. The wall of denial finally begins to crack! Erica Duggan's lawyers have successfully argued that the U.K. Attorney General's refusal to allow a second inquest into the death of Mrs. Duggan's son, Jeremiah, "should be amenable to review, allowing Mrs. Duggan to resubmit her case to the High Court." Mrs Duggan says: "This is the best outcome we could have wished for. The court said we had a lot of important evidence that the original post mortem missed. Hopefully the application for a new inquest will now just be a formality. We are not expecting anyone to oppose it." In other words, a new inquest will look at the forensic evidence that Jeremiah may have been beaten to death, including the fact that his passport, with his blood on it, was in the possession of the LaRouchians, not on his body, when the body was examined by the police at the putative "suicide" scene. This could finally lead to the British government putting heavy pressure on the German government to stop covering up for Lyn and Helga LaRouche and their far-right Jew-hating thugs in Wiesbaden.
"Inquest win for student's family," BBC News, Nov. 5, 2008. "The family of a student killed in a 'state of terror' after unwittingly attending a far-right event in Germany have come closer to a fresh inquest..."
"Jewish Student's Death in Germany Was Murder, Experts Say," Arutz Sheva (Israel), Nov. 2, 2008. "Although Jeremiah's blood-soaked address book was found in his pocket, his passport was not. Instead, his passport, which was also stained with his blood, was later handed to the police by Ortrum Cramer, one of LaRouche's followers....Cramer has never been asked how the passport came into her possession."
"Cult death student's family in court fight for new inquest," Daily Mail (London), Nov. 1, 2008. "New evidence gathered by three top forensic specialists shows the young student was savagely beaten to death with a blunt instrument. Their reports said that the damage sustained by his body could not have been caused by vehicles hitting him, and appeared to have been deliberately inflicted."
"LaRouche's cult is dangerous for society--and especially for young people." Fact sheet prepared by Lyndon LaRouche Watch for the Justice for Jeremiah forum in Berlin, Oct. 17, 2008. Summarizes the controversy re Jeremiah's death, raises questions about the German authorities' apparent protection of LaRouche, and also hits on the larger issue of extremist cults in Europe.
For more information, go to the Duggan family website at http://www.justiceforjeremiah.com. Erica Duggan can be contacted at justiceforjeremiah@googlemail.com
