Suspicious death of Jeremiah Duggan

Speech by Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP delivered to European Parliament on Mon 11th Apr 2005

Ludford (ALDE). - Mr President, two years ago a young man from London named Jeremiah Duggan died when he was hit by vehicles on a motorway near Wiesbaden in Germany. The German authorities very quickly decided that it was a case of suicide and failed even to take witness statements or statements from those who last saw him. There seems to have been a deliberate avoidance of considering all the facts in the case.

In spite of considerable evidence gathered by Mrs Erica Duggan, his mother, that Jeremiah died in very worrying and suspicious circumstances, last week the Hessen State Prosecutor decided not to investigate. The evidence she presented concerns the organisation that Jeremiah was involved in immediately before he met his death and which appears to be a sinister anti-Semitic sect. It may be that he was being hounded by it and mentally tortured. It is called the Lyndon LaRouche network or the Schiller Institute. It recruits young people in Europe to a dangerous cult. Some of its ideas are plain rubbish but there are also plenty of destructive, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. In these circumstances, the position of the prosecutor that her job is not to safeguard the public from known dangers is inexplicable.

I shall be raising this with MEP colleagues and may wish to ask you to intervene at an appropriate time. The European Convention on Human Rights imposes an obligation to protect life, which must mean investigating suspicious deaths.