Family angry at lack of state support for new inqury into brother’s death

Date Published: 08-Jun-2011

A distraught County Galway family is angry and bewildered over the failure of the Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore to demand the reopening of an inquiry into the suspicious death of a 34 year old man in Germany late last year.

Matthew Fitzpatrick from Portumna was found hanging in his Mannheim apartment and the authorities there deemed his death a suicide – his family insist otherwise saying that there were 34 marks on his body which haven’t been explained by the German police.

And when his body was flown home to Ireland, an independent post mortem was carried out and it was revealed at an inquest into his death that Matthew had a blunt force injury to the back of his head along with a deep injury to his lower back – injuries which were not revealed in the post mortem carried out in Germany.

Since his death two weeks before Christmas, the Fitzpatrick family has campaigned for the circumstances into his death be reexamined by German police and has brought the matter to the doorstep of the Labour leader Eamon Gilmore, who is also Minister for Foreign Affairs.

But family members are disappointed at his lack of response to their request although they have the support of officials within the Department of Foreign Affairs – however, they believe a request from the Minister to reopen the inquiry would carry a lot of weight.

“He spoke in the Dail about having a very special interest in the case but Minister Gilmore has not been in touch with our family at all”, explained Patrick Fitzpatrick, a brother of the deceased.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.