Death of Jeremiah Duggan
| Jeremiah Joseph Duggan | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
10 November 1980 North London |
| Died | 27 March 2003 (aged 22) Berliner Straße, Bundesstraße 455, Wiesbaden, Germany 50°03′38″N 8°16′59″E / 50.060617°N 8.283164°E |
| Resting place | Highgate Cemetery, London |
| Nationality | British |
| Parent(s) | Erica Duggan, Hugo Duggan |
Jeremiah Joseph Duggan (10 November 1980 – 27 March 2003) was a British student in Paris who died during a visit to Wiesbaden, Germany, after being struck by several cars on a dual carriageway. The circumstances of his death became a matter of dispute because at the time he died Duggan was attending a youth "cadre" school organized by the LaRouche movement, an international network led by the American political activist Lyndon LaRouche.
The German police concluded that Duggan had committed suicide after running several kilometres 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, 50 minutes before he died, apparently distressed about his involvement in it.
Arguing that the German police had not investigated the case thoroughly, Erica Duggan commissioned forensic reports suggesting the car accident may 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 Oberlandesgericht (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 has attributed the controversy to LaRouche's political opponents, including former British prime minister Tony Blair and former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney, who they say sought to discredit LaRouche over his opposition to the 2003 Iraq War and his criticism of the anthropogenic global-warming theory.
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 left South Africa for England because of apartheid. She, Hugo, Jeremiah and his two older sisters made their home in Golders Green, north London. The parents divorced when Duggan was seven.
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Wikipedia