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LaRouchies and Murder in Germany

Com­ment: The fas­cist move­ment of Lyn­don LaRouche has made con­sid­er­able head­way in recent years in the so-called “pro­gres­sive” sec­tor. The fol­low­ing arti­cle reveals its true nature, as well as appar­ent col­lu­sion in a LaRouche killing by the Ger­man author­i­ties.

“Mys­tery of the Dead Briton and the Right-Wing Cult” by Jerome Tay­lor; The Inde­pen­dent [UK]; 2/27/2010.

It was the kind of phone call every moth­er dreads. At 4.24am on 27 March 2003, Eri­ca Dug­gan was wok­en by her son Jere­mi­ah, a nor­mal­ly ebul­lient 22-year-old. “Mum, I’m in trou­ble,” he said. In hushed tones, he told her he was in Ger­many and began spelling the let­ters of the place he was stay­ing, “W, i, e, s ...”. Then the line went dead.

The next call came from the police. Ger­man offi­cers had found Jer­ry’s body three hours lat­er on the side of the B455, a busy dual car­riage­way run­ning south-east out of the city of Wies­baden towards the Rhine. Wit­ness­es said a man had scram­bled into the cen­tre of the road and was hit by a brown Peu­geot 406, and then a blue Volk­swa­gen. By the time para­medics and police arrived, Jer­ry was dead of head injuries.

The sub­se­quent police inves­ti­ga­tion was per­func­to­ry, clas­si­fy­ing his death as a sui­cide. Wit­ness­es were allowed to leave the scene, cars were moved before being pho­tographed and an exter­nal post-mortem was con­duct­ed at a near­by mor­tu­ary with­out any detailed foren­sic checks.

Few par­ents would find it easy to accept that their child has com­mit­ted sui­cide but for Mrs Dug­gan, a retired teacher from north Lon­don whose Jew­ish fam­i­ly fled the Nazis in the late 1930s, the idea that her son took his life did not make sense.

“He had so many plans for the future and nev­er showed even the slight­est inkling of depres­sion,” she told The Inde­pen­dent, in her moth­er’s home in Gold­ers Green. “But it’s more than just that. The call I got from him just before he died, that was from some­one who des­per­ate­ly want­ed to live, who was try­ing to sur­vive. It was­n’t from some­one intent on killing him­self.”

Mrs Dug­gan, in deep doubt of the Ger­man police belief that her son’s death was sui­cide, hired pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tors and foren­sic experts to look at the evi­dence again, even­tu­al­ly sell­ing her house to pay the costs and mov­ing in with her age­ing moth­er. Their reports have cast seri­ous ques­tion marks over the offi­cial por­tray­al of Jer­ry as sui­ci­dal, sug­gest­ing instead a man who was either des­per­ate­ly try­ing to escape unknown assailants when he stum­bled out on the dual car­riage­way, or who had been attacked before he got there.

Yes­ter­day, armed with this new evi­dence, the Dug­gan fam­i­ly’s lawyers went to the High Court after the Attor­ney Gen­er­al, Baroness Scot­land, took the high­ly unusu­al step of grant­i­ng them per­mis­sion to seek a sec­ond inquest into Jer­ry’s death.

The first inquest, in 2004, reject­ed the Ger­man police sui­cide sug­ges­tion, and returned an open ver­dict, find­ing instead that he had died in a “state of ter­ror”. But inves­ti­ga­tors failed to look wider. Sup­port­ers hope a fresh inquest will final­ly force Ger­man police to rein­ves­ti­gate why a British Jew died in mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances after spend­ing five days with a far-right polit­i­cal cult led by a con­vict­ed fraud­ster who is known for his vir­u­lent anti-Semit­ic views.

Jer­ry had been a stu­dent at the British Insti­tute in Paris but he had trav­elled to Wies­baden to attend what he thought would be an anti-Iraq war con­fer­ence. “He was an ide­al­is­tic boy who want­ed to change the world,” his moth­er said. “He was angry about the upcom­ing war and want­ed to do some­thing about it. But he was also excit­ed because he was begin­ning to learn about pol­i­tics.”

The con­fer­ence was organ­ised by the Schiller Insti­tute, an extrem­ist polit­i­cal think-tank linked to a right-wing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist, Lyn­don LaRouche. He is an 87-year-old con­vict­ed fraud­ster who has made eight unsuc­cess­ful attempts to run as an inde­pen­dent can­di­date in the US pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Some of LaRouche’s more unusu­al claims include that the British monar­chy and MI6 are behind the glob­al drugs trade.

In the States, he is large­ly regard­ed as an amus­ing sideshow whose apoc­a­lyp­tic writ­ings attract vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple look­ing for answers. But under­ly­ing much of his work is a deep anti-Semi­tism that describes the world as being con­trolled by a mass Zion­ist con­spir­a­cy of bankers, lob­by­ists and politi­cians.

The Schiller Insti­tute, run by his Ger­man-born wife, spreads that mes­sage around Europe; on the night Jer­ry died, LaRouche addressed the con­fer­ence in Wies­baden. In Jer­ry’s notes on the five days he spent there, Mrs Dug­gan dis­cov­ered that her son had become aware of the anti-Semit­ic agen­da of many LaRouche fol­low­ers and had spo­ken out against them. “There were a lot of com­ments blam­ing the Jews for Iraq and he got up to say that he was Jew­ish and he did­n’t sup­port the war,” she said. “What­ev­er hap­pened it’s clear he fell out with these peo­ple very quick­ly.”

La Rouche blames the CIA, MI6 and the KGB for any polit­i­cal or media crit­i­cism aimed in his direc­tion. He described the Dug­gan case as a hoax con­trived by “admir­ers of [for­mer US Vice-Pres­i­dent] Dick Cheney and Tony Blair”. Mrs Dug­gan’s efforts to inves­ti­gate her son’s death is, he says, a “smear”.

Paul Can­ning, a for­mer Scot­land Yard foren­sic offi­cer, has stud­ied the 79 pho­tographs tak­en by Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tors of the crash site and Jer­ry’s body. Ger­man police said he was hit by the Peu­geot, then run over by the Volk­swa­gen. But Mr Can­ning could not find evi­dence of tyre marks on the body. Nor was there any blood, flesh or hair on either car.

Mr Can­ning, who has inves­ti­gat­ed hun­dreds of road fatal­i­ties, believes this is “incon­ceiv­able”, report­ing that he had nev­er come across a high-speed col­li­sion of a car and pedes­tri­an where no traces of blood are found. “I do not believe the images depict how Jer­ry came to meet his pre­ma­ture death,” he added. “It is pos­si­ble that Jer­ry lost his life else­where, pri­or to being placed at the scene.”

Ter­ence Mer­ston, anoth­er for­mer Met Police inves­ti­ga­tor who has stud­ied the pho­tographs, backs Mr Can­ning. “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,” he said. “It is also my view that the dam­age to the Peu­geot car has been delib­er­ate­ly caused.”

But how did Jer­ry sus­tain the head injuries that killed him? A post-mortem by a British pathol­o­gist, Dr David Shove, dis­cov­ered defence wounds on Jer­ry’s arms as well as blood in his lungs and stom­ach. At the speed that wit­ness­es say he was struck, he would have been killed instant­ly, but the blood in his lungs and stom­ach (caused by breath­ing in and swal­low­ing after a major haem­or­rhage) sug­gest he was alive for some time, after intense trau­ma.

Mrs Dug­gan said: “What we real­ly need is for Ger­many to look again at my son’s death.” But the Ger­man author­i­ties are reluc­tant to act. A bid by Ger­man lawyers claim­ing police breached human rights laws by fail­ing to inves­ti­gate prop­er­ly has floun­dered for four years in the coun­try’s high­est court, the Fed­er­al Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court. Police in Wies­baden have refused to rein­ves­ti­gate, or reopen their files.

Now, a British inquest is the best oppor­tu­ni­ty the Dug­gan fam­i­ly has for find­ing out what real­ly hap­pened to Jer­ry. “It’s been a long and dif­fi­cult jour­ney but I’m begin­ning to think we may be near­ing the end,” a vis­i­bly exhaust­ed Mrs Dug­gan added. “From the moment I got that call it’s been a sev­en-year fight for jus­tice. I can’t stop now.”

Discussion

One comment for “LaRouchies and Murder in Germany”

  1. Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 25, 2012, 7:30 am

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