National Post (National Edition)
Parents slam ‘dangerous’ act of Canadian in hostage ordeal
Taking daughter to Afghanistan ‘unconscionable’
The parents of an American woman freed with her family after five years of captivity say they are elated, but also angry at their Canadian son-in law for taking their daughter to Afghanistan.
“Taking your pregnant wife to a very dangerous place, to me, and the kind of person I am, is unconscionable,” Caitlan Coleman’s father, Jim, told ABC News.
Caitlan Coleman and Joshua Boyle were rescued Wednesday, five years after they had been abducted by a Taliban-linked extremist network while in Afghanistan as part of a multi-nation backpacking trip. She was pregnant at the time and had three children in captivity.
Two Pakistani security officials say the family left by plane from Islamabad on Friday. The officials did not say where the family was headed, but Boyle’s family has said the couple’s plan is to return to Canada. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with official protocol.
Caitlan Coleman is from Stewartstown, Penn., and 34-year-old Boyle is Canadian from Smiths Fall, Ont.
Coleman’s mother, Lynda, said the opportunity to finally speak to her daughter after she was freed was “incredible.”
“I’ve been waiting to hear that voice for so long. And then to hear her voice and have it sound exactly like the last time I talked to her,” she said.
Pakistan’s foreign Ministry spokesman Nafees Zakaria said the Pakistani raid that led to the family’s rescue was based on a tip from U.S. intelligence and shows that Pakistan will act against a “common enemy” when Washington shares information.
U.S. officials have long accused Pakistan of ignoring groups like the Haqqani network, which was holding the family.
The operation appeared to have unfolded quickly and ended with what some described as a dangerous raid, a shootout and a captor’s final, terrifying threat to “kill the hostage.” Boyle told his parents that he, his wife and their children were intercepted by Pakistani forces while being transported in the back or trunk of their captors’ car and that some of his captors were killed. He suffered only a shrapnel wound, his family said.
U.S. officials did not confirm those details.
A U.S. military official said that a military hostage team had flown to Pakistan Wednesday prepared to fly the family out. The team did a preliminary health assessment and had a transport plane ready to go, but sometime after daybreak Thursday, as the family members were walking to the plane, Boyle said he did not want to board, the official said.
Boyle’s father said his son did not want to board the plane because it was headed to Bagram Air Base and that the family wanted to return directly to North America. Another U.S. official said Boyle was nervous about being in “custody” given his family ties.
He was once married to Zaynab Khadr, the older sister of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr and the daughter of a senior al-Qaida financier. Her father, the late Ahmed Said Khadr, and the family stayed with Osama bin Laden briefly when Omar Khadr was a boy.
The Canadian-born Omar Khadr was 15 when he was captured by U.S. troops following a firefight and was taken to the U.S. detention centre at Guantanamo Bay. Officials had discounted any link between that background and Boyle’s capture, with one official describing it in 2014 as a “horrible coincidence.”
The U.S. Justice Department said neither Boyle nor Coleman is wanted for any federal crime.
The couple told U.S. officials and their families they wanted to fly commercially to Canada.
U.S. officials call the Haqqani group a terrorist organization and have targeted its leaders with drone strikes. But the group also operates like a criminal network. Unlike the Islamic State group, it does not typically execute Western hostages, preferring to ransom them for cash.
The Haqqani network had previously demanded the release of Anas Haqqani, a son of the founder of the group, in exchange for turning over the American-Canadian family. In one of the videos released by their captors, Boyle implored the Afghan government not to execute Taliban prisoners, or he and his wife would be killed.
U.S. officials have said that several other Americans are being held by militant groups in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
They include Kevin King, 60, a teacher at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul who was abducted in August 2016, and Paul Overby, an author in his 70s who had travelled to the region several times but disappeared in eastern Afghanistan in mid-2014.