Website rallies for release of U.S. trucker

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Updated May 4, 2012
Jabin BoganJabin Bogan

A group headed up by Daniel Fuller, president of the Hotels 4 Truckers.com web service and a former driver, is calling on the trucking community to gather efforts in support of 27-year-old Jabin Bogan, a Dallas-based truck driver for Demco Express. Bogan has been charged with smuggling by Mexican authorities, though his company and many others have provided evidence that he accidently crossed the border into Juarez, Chihuahua, carrying a truckload of military-grade ammunition destined for United Nations Ammunition in Phoenix.

Fuller has launched the freejabin.com website, providing information on the case and contacts for interested parties to express support for the detained driver.

Bogan’s mother, Dallas-based Aletha Smith, supports all such efforts. “She’s trying very hard to get some attention to the situation from a national level,” Fuller said. “There needs to be a lot of pressure ramped up to bring this man back home.” Drivers, he added, by helping increase awareness of Bogan’s detention, “can be the determining factor to helping see this man get returned home.”

Smith says she was in El Paso, Texas, Tuesday with Bogan’s lawyer and had the first opportunity since his detention to speak with her son. “He has been accused, charged and indicted” on smuggling counts, said Smith, and sits today in “Mexican federal prison in Veracruz for taking a wrong turn.”

In El Paso, Smith was able to take “the route that he took when he got into trouble,” she added, along with some supporters, some of whom ended up getting stopped by the border patrol and forced to turn around. Her son was not afforded such an opportunity after presenting his papers to Mexican authorities when he couldn’t understand what they were asking of him, Smith said.

“We have proven that the ammunition is legit,” she said, citing work with the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to prove such to Mexican authorities. “Right now, my son is filing an appeal” to the charges.

Former driver Fuller reacted personally to Bogan’s story, referencing times he’d crossed accidentally into Canada as a driver himself, when news came out of the driver’s April 19 detention by Mexican authorities. “When I looked at the facts and I read the story,” Fuller said. “I just got really troubled and said, if not me, then who? I just want to help Jabin get returned home quickly.”

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Visit the Free Jabin website here.