Canadian Held Hostage in Afghanistan Says Militants Killed His Child
14, 2017
OTTAWA — A Canadian man who was held hostage with his American wife and children in Afghanistan by a Taliban faction for five years said late Friday
that his captors had killed their infant daughter and raped his wife.
The former hostage, Joshua Boyle, 34, who was seized in October 2012 by the Haqqani network with his pregnant wife, Caitlan Coleman, 31, lashed out at his captors in a statement he read to reporters after landing in Toronto with Ms. Coleman
and three young children who were born during captivity.
His hands sometimes shaking as he read from a small notebook at the airport, Mr. Boyle said, "The stupidity
and evil of the Haqqani network’s kidnapping of a pilgrim and his heavily pregnant wife engaged in helping ordinary villagers in Taliban-controlled regions of Afghanistan was eclipsed only by the stupidity and evil of authorizing the murder of my infant daughter." The birth and killing of the infant had not been previously revealed.
he world, those ordinary villagers who live deep inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan." He also described himself as a "pilgrim," and said they had been in a region
that government and aid agencies had failed to reach, suggesting that their effort was self-styled. that the most neglected minority group in t
In a video made during their captivity, Ms. Coleman, who is from Pennsylvania, said
that she had been "defiled." Visibly angry, Mr. Boyle said on Friday that his wife had been raped by a guard with the assistance of the guard’s superiors.
An American woman, her Canadian husband and their three children have been freed after
being held for five years by the Haqqani network, a faction of the Taliban.