A Golders Green student whose body was found on the side of a German motorway did not commit suicide, a coroner has concluded.
Former Quainton Hall School pupil Jeremiah Duggan, 22, was killed in Wiesbaden, Germany on March 27, 2003, after apparently being hit by two cars on a motorway.
At the close of a three-day inquest at North London Coroner’s Court today, Coroner Andrew Walker said he “totally rejected" the possibility that it was a suicide.
Instead, he recorded a narrative conclusion of death by road traffic collision - but said there were unexplained injuries on the young man's body.
The Jewish student had been attending what he believed was a protest against the Iraq war – but turned out to be a youth event organised by far-right group LaRouche.
German authorities ruled that Jeremiah had killed himself, but his family has always insisted this was not the case.
On Tuesday, the court heard witness statements from drivers who said Jeremiah had attempted suicide by jumping in front of cars on the motorway.
But forensic experts gave evidence suggesting Jeremiah’s death was a “set-up” and had been “stage managed.”
The court also heard that Jeremiah rang his mother, Erica Duggan, at 4.25am on the morning of his death, and told her he was frightened and in “deep, deep trouble”.
Giving his verdict, Mr Walker rejected the expert evidence, which he said was "incompatible" with the witness statements from the drivers.
He said he could see "no good reason" to dismiss the evidence of the two drivers, as they had no connection with LaRouche.
He said: “On the March 27, 2003 in the early hours of the morning, Jeremiah Joseph Duggan, who had been attending a conference run by a far-right organisation, was staying with a friend in Wiesbaden with a family.
“Having spoken to his girlfriend and mother in alarming terms, Mr Duggan, having asked to leave the house for a cigarette accompanied by the friend, suddenly ran from the house. The friend who was with him did not follow him.
“At about 6am the same day Jeremiah Joseph Duggan received fatal injuries following a collision with two cars on the Berliner Strasse and died in a road traffic collision.”
Coroner Walker added that Jeremiah had attended a conference run by a “far-right wing organisation”.
He said: “Against the background of the start of the Iraq war, together with Mr Duggan expressing that he was a Jew, British and questioning the material put before him, may have had a bearing on Mr Duggan’s’ death in the sense that it may have put Mr Duggan at risk from members of the organisation and caused Mr Duggan to become distressed and seek to leave.
“There are a number of unexplained injuries that suggest Mr Duggan may have been involved in an altercation at some stage before his death.”
Earlier in the day, the court heard from former French MP and cult expert Catherine Picard.
She said: “Jeremiah might have been under the influence or control of the organisation LaRouche, which exploited his vulnerability due to geographical isolation in Germany without members of his family or girlfriend, and played on a potential loss of bearings.”
Asked about LaRouche she said: “This movement in itself has one particular peculiarity. It bases all of its arguments on politics, which is very attractive to young people, who perhaps quite generously think they are subscribing to a movement that is quite leftist.
“It’s apparently left-wing but is masking very extreme right-wing speech.”
She said Jeremiah would have been under intense pressure at the conference with the amount of lectures and reading.
She added: “The idea would be to try and confuse completely. It’s like an infantalisation of the person. He would have felt completely overwhelmed by all of the things he had been taught over the days, to the point where it didn’t make sense. And one of the functions of that is to try and make the person distant from the rest of the group.”
The court also heard from Professor Matthew Feldman from Teesside University, an expert on far-right groups, who spoke of the anti-Semitic and anti-British nature of LaRouche.
He said once the group had found out Jeremiah was British, Jewish and had been to the Tavistock Centre – a Hampstead clinic seen by followers as a “clearing house” for British Jewish control of the world – he would have been viewed with great suspicion.
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