Family of Jeremiah Duggan hoping for fresh inquest

May 4 2010 By David Baker

duggan

THE family of a popular Harrow man who died abroad will this month find out if a fresh inquest in to his death will be granted.

For more than seven years Erica Duggan has been campaigning for justice for her 22-year-old son Jeremiah, after he died in Wisebaden, Germany, in March 2003.

This week it was finally confirmed that a hearing will be held at The Royal Courts of Justice on May 20 to decide if an inquest into his suspicious death will go ahead.

German investigators maintain that the former Quainton Hall School pupil committed suicide by leaping in front of speeding cars at a busy dual carriageway, five days after he arrived in the west-central state capital.

But his parents are adamant that the young Jew was beaten to death by members of the LaRouche Schiller Institute, which they describe as a dangerous anti-Semitic cult.

In 2003 a British inquest returned a narrative verdict and ruled out suicide but the family have been waiting ever since to hear whether the Attorney-General would grant the request for a fresh inquest.

Mrs Duggan and her husband Hugo have spent years trying to find out the circumstances of his death after he called them hours before his death to say that he was in 'deep trouble'.

They have been to Wisebaden in an attempt to get more information and were followed by film crews as part of a Channel Four documentary, aired last month.

Thousands have backed the families cries for justice on social network site Facebook, signed a host of online petitions and showed support on www.justiceforjeremiah.com.

Mrs Duggan has been eagerly awaiting a date for the hearing and said: “A great deal depends on this decision. It has taken many years to reach this point in the UK and because justice delayed is justice denied we have high hopes that a new enquiry will come about so that the many questions we have been left with are answered.

“For the last seven years we have gone through painstaking attempts to seek answers and we hope this can help in our pursuit for justice.

"It has been an incredibly hard seven years for all of us.”