Family freed returns to Canada, says child killed
TORONTO — Former hostage Joshua Boyle said upon arriving back in Canada the Haqqani network in Afghanistan had killed his infant daughter and raped his American wife during the years they were held in captivity.
Boyle gave the statement shortly after landing in Canada late Friday with his wife, Caitlan Coleman, and three young children.
The family was rescued on Wednesday, five years after they had been abducted by the Talibanlinked network in Afghanistan as part of a backpacking trip. Coleman was pregnant at the time and had four children in captivity. The birth of the fourth child had not been publicly known before.
“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,” he said.
Boyle said his wife was raped by a guard who was assisted by his superiors. He asked for the Afghan government to bring them to justice.
“God willing, this litany of stupidity will be the epitaph of the Haqqani network,” he said.
He said he was in Afghanistan to help villagers “who live deep inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan where no NGO, no aid worker and no government has ever successfully been able to bring the necessary help.”
On the plane from London, Boyle provided a written statement to The Associated Press saying his family has “unparalleled resilience and determination.”
Coleman, from Stewartstown, Pennsylvania, sat in the aisle of the business-class cabin wearing a tancolored headscarf.
She nodded wordlessly when she confirmed her identity to a reporter on board the flight. In the two seats next to her were her two elder children. In the seat beyond that was Boyle, with their youngest child in his lap. U.S. State Department officials were on the plane with them.
The handwritten statement expressed disagreement with U.S. foreign policy. “God has given me and my family unparalleled resilience and determination, and to allow that to stagnate, to pursue personal pleasure or comfort while there is still deliberate and organized injustice in the world would be a betrayal of all I believe, and tantamount to sacrilege,” he wrote.
He nodded to a State Department official and said, “Their interests are not my interests.”
He added one of his children is in poor health and had to be force-fed by their Pakistani rescuers.
“It will be of incredible importance to my family that we are able to build a secure sanctuary for our three surviving children to call a home,” he said at the airport. “To try to regain some portion of the childhood that they have lost.”
Dan Boyle, Joshua’s younger brother, said outside the family home in Smiths Falls, Ontario, that he had spoken to his brother a few times in the past few days. “He’s doing very well. He sounds a lot like how he sounded five years ago. He sounds like he had his head on his shoulders and his wits about him,” he said.
The Canadian government said in a statement they will “continue to support him and his family now that they have returned.”
“We join the Boyle family in rejoicing over the long-awaited return to Canada of their loved ones,” the Canadian government said.
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 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.
A U.S. official said a hostage team had flown to Pakistan Wednesday and prepared to fly the family out. The team did a preliminary health assessment and had a transport plane ready to go, but Thursday 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 the family wanted to return directly to North America. Another U.S. official said Boyle was nervous about his family ties. He was once married to Zaynab Khadr, the older sister of Omar Khadr. The U.S. Justice Department said Boyle is not wanted for any crime.