Canadian freed from captivity says he and his wife were kidnapped because she was pregnant

A couple held hostage for five years by a Taliban-linked network and forced to raise three children while in captivity were initially targeted for ransom because of the impending birth of their first child, the Canadian man at the heart of the case speculated Saturday. Joshua Boyle said he and his wife Caitlan Coleman heard at least half a dozen reasons why they had been snatched from a village in Afghanistan and held against their will by the Haqqani network over the years they were imprisoned. The most credible, however, had to do with the fact that Coleman was well into the third trimester of pregnancy at the time of their capture in 2012. “As near as we can tell, we were targeted to be kidnapped because it was well-known by the eventual-kidnappers that Caitlan was heavily pregnant,” Boyle said in an email sent to The Canadian Press. “They spoke often immediately following the kidnapping that ‘America will pay for you very quickly, America will not want to risk the baby is born here.”’ Boyle said Coleman was the obvious focus of the kidnappers during the first few weeks of captivity. Their guards’ confidence in a “get-rich-quick scam” began to erode a month after the couple had been seized and several weeks before the child was born at the end of 2012. Coleman would give birth three more times during the following five years, with two of the children surviving and accompanying their parents back to Canada after being liberated by Pakistani commandos. One of the children, who Boyle described as an infant daughter, was killed in retaliation for his refusal to accept an offer from the kidnappers at some point during the family’s captivity.