page_title: Death of Jeremiah Duggan
section_title: Second German investigation
hierarchical_section_title: Death of Jeremiah Duggan / Inquiries / Second German investigation
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: das Oberlandesgericht in Frankfurt am Main
context_page_description: Jeremiah Joseph Duggan 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.
  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 which suggested the car accident might have been staged and that Duggan had died elsewhere.
context_section_description: 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.
  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."
  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.
caption: Oberlandesgericht in Frankfurt
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