Jeremiah Duggan height - How tall is Jeremiah Duggan?

The conference, "How to Reconstruct a Bankrupt World," was held in Bad Schwalbach, near Wiesbaden, from 21 to 23 March. LaRouche was the keynote speaker, with a speech entitled "Physical Geometry as Strategy." According to April Witt in The Washington Post, he told the audience that George W. Bush was an unreformed drunk (he’s a teetotaler), Woodrow Wilson had founded the Ku Klux Klan from the White House, John F. Kennedy was killed by a domestic American operation, and the US was using the war in Iraq to "ignite catastrophic global warfare." The plot to launch a world war was being influenced, he said, by people who "like Hitler, admire Nietzsche, but 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." The people behind the plot were the "independent central-banking-system crowd, the slime-mold," he said, the same people who had brought Hitler to power in the 1930s.

The view of the German police was that Duggan had arrived at that stretch of road after running 5 km from the apartment. Duggan's family complained that the police had failed to establish that. Other allegations included that he had spent the night at the nearby LaRouche offices and ran from there to the road, and that he had run onto the road from a car. Forensic reports commissioned by Erica Duggan suggested that he may have died elsewhere and been moved onto the road after the fact, a position the coroner rejected in 2015.

The inquest took place over three days in May 2015 at North London Coroner's Court before the coroner Andrew Walker. Walker rejected the view that the accident had been staged, calling it implausible. The court heard from Catherine Picard, a French expert on cults, that Duggan might have experienced "intense pressure and psychological violence" at the conference, including one-on-one sessions, hours of lectures, and "being subjected to repeated conspiracy theories and antisemitic discourse." Matthew Feldman, a historian at Teesside University and expert on the far right, testified that, if other participants had learned that Duggan was Jewish, British and had attended the Tavistock Clinic, "it would have been taken very seriously by the movement." Walker delivered a narrative verdict:

At around 4:20 am—by now Thursday, 27 March—Duggan called his girlfriend on the roommate's mobile phone. She said he was speaking very quietly, sounded agitated and confused, complaining that he no longer knew what was true and real, and that someone was conducting experiments with computers and magnetic waves, perhaps on him. She asked him to take a train to Paris in the morning. According to the roommate, Duggan then telephoned his mother, after which he ran out of the house. Mrs. Duggan said the first call came at 5:24 am German time (4:24 am in the UK):

After the conference, Duggan attended a LaRouche Youth Movement cadre school in Wiesbaden with 60–70 others. Chalifoux, the recruiter who had accompanied him to Germany, returned to Paris. According to another potential recruit, there were hours of lectures, seminars and one-on-one meetings every day, as well as chanting and singing.

The new investigation opened in April 2013. As of 2015 prosecutors were reportedly investigating allegations against two individuals, one German, one French, on suspicion of causing bodily harm resulting in death. Erica criticised the appointment of the same police officer who had presided over the case in 2003, accusing the German authorities of "institutional racism" akin to that of the Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry. In 2014 the Board of Deputies of British Jews asked Chancellor Angela Merkel to arrange an independent investigation, and in 2015 asked the British Foreign Secretary to raise the issue with the German government.

A second appeal to the Oberlandesgericht succeeded in 2012. In what the Berliner Zeitung described as an extremely unusual decision, the court ordered the Wiesbaden prosecutor to re-open the inquiry. The court said that a pedestrian leaving the LaRouche offices in Wiesbaden, in the direction of the town centre, would have reached exactly that junction in the Berliner Straße, and "would have had to cross the four-lane road if he did not want or was unable to turn back."

Arguing that the German police had not investigated the case thoroughly, Erica commissioned forensic reports which suggested the car accident 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."

Those views were challenged during a High Court hearing in 2008 regarding the application for a new inquest. Contrary to the claim that there was no sign that Duggan had come into contact with the cars, there were "traces on the underside of the Golf," according to Cecilia Ivimy on behalf of the Attorney General. She described the argument that the accident had been staged as requiring someone to have inflicted head injuries after the phone call to Erica, placed Duggan on the road, inflicted damage to two cars, scattered debris, and created skid marks, all without attracting attention. In 2010 the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany called the allegations outlandish. The Wiesbadener Kurier criticised what it saw as the defamation of "two completely innocent motorists."

Under German law, Arlett said that he could investigate further only if there existed "concrete evidence of third-party involvement," and there was none; the Schiller Institute had been mentioned in connection with the death only because Duggan had attended an event of theirs. Officials maintained the same position in 2007 and 2009.

Relying on the forensic reviews, Erica applied in May 2007 for a new inquest. A cross-party group of MPs signed an early day motion that month calling on the Attorney General to support the application. After protracted legal action by Erica, the High Court ordered the new inquest in May 2010.

The Schiller Institute issued a statement in 2007: "The Schiller Institute has always maintained that it had no involvement whatsoever in Jeremiah's death, and has expressed its sympathy to the Duggan family." In 2015 a spokesperson told Newsweek that the allegations were "utterly preposterous":

Duggan's family appealed unsuccessfully in 2006 to the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt regarding the decision to close the German police investigation. Their appeal against that decision was rejected by Germany's Federal Constitutional Court in 2010.

The Germans did not conduct an autopsy, because the cause of death had been established and there was no evidence of foul play. His clothes were not returned to his family and were assumed to have been destroyed. The police took no formal witness statements. Witness evidence was recorded as "brief, sometimes contradictory, notes," according to The Daily Telegraph. Nothing suggested that the drivers had any connection to the LaRouche movement or Duggan. The prosecutor closed the case after three months. In 2004 Dieter Arlett, the Wiesbaden public prosecutor, told the BBC:

Erica set up the "Justice for Jeremiah" campaign in April 2004 with legal support from the British Foreign Office. In 2005 she hand-delivered a list of questions to Shove, the pathologist who had performed the autopsy. When she showed him Duggan's autopsy report, he allegedly replied that Duggan had been "severely beaten around the head" and said he had not realised it had been a traffic accident. Shove declined to sign a statement to that effect and apparently could not be located for the second inquest.

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.

The LaRouche movement attributed criticism of its involvement in the case 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's first contact with the LaRouche movement was in Paris in January 2003, when he bought a copy of the LaRouche French-language newspaper, Nouvelle Solidarité, from a booth near the British Institute, outside the Invalides station on the Paris Métro. The man who sold him the paper was Benoit Chalifoux, a writer for the newspaper and one of the movement's "organizers" or recruiters.

Duggan was intensely opposed to the Iraq War, as were Chalifoux and his group of friends from the movement. Protests were taking place all over the world in the weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003. Duggan began seeing more of Chalifoux's group and was invited to attend a Schiller Institute conference near Wiesbaden, the LaRouche movement's European headquarters. Duggan and his parents believed it was an anti-war conference. His mother searched for material about LaRouche on the web in vain; possibly she or her son misspelled the name as "Laroche."

Duggan's body was flown back to England on 31 March 2003, where a non-forensic post-mortem examination was conducted on 4 April by pathologist David Shove. Shove found head injuries, bruising on the backs of the arms and hands, blood in the lungs and stomach, and a full bladder. A blood sample showed no drugs or alcohol.

Shove was not called to attend the inquest, which took place in November 2003. Robert Hawthorne, an accident investigator, told the court that Duggan may only have appeared to leap in front of the cars: "The drivers may have perceived that he leapt when in actual fact he was either running to clear the cars or what they saw was the post-impact movement of Jeremiah as he was flung around." The court heard testimony about the conference Duggan had attended. A Metropolitan Police memo was entered as evidence: "The Schiller Institute and the LaRouche Youth Movement ... blames the Jewish people for the Iraq war and all the other problems in the world. Jeremiah's lecture notes and bulletins showed the anti-Semitic nature of [the] ideology." The coroner, Dr. William Dolman, delivered a narrative verdict:

In 2006 LaRouche issued a statement saying the allegations were a hoax stemming from a campaign orchestrated by Dick Cheney, then Vice President of the United States, and Cheney's wife Lynne. In 2007 the LaRouche movement published a letter from the Metropolitan Police, dated 14 July 2003, that it said was obtained under the British Freedom of Information Act, in which an officer wrote that he had been assured the case had been fully investigated in Germany.

Duggan attended Fitzjohns 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. He 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 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 said 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.

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 organised by the LaRouche movement, an international network led by the American political activist Lyndon LaRouche.

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, in the United States, and in Wiesbaden, 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 said 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.

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 left South Africa for England because of 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 seven.