Taliban-linked kidnappers could face justice in Canada: Expert
A freed Canadian hostage held captive with his family in Afghanistan could see his kidnappers brought to justice in Canada but there are plenty of hurdles to overcome, a legal expert says.
Joshua Boyle demanded that his abductors, members of the Taliban linked Haqqa ni network, be punished for their actions when he returned to Canada on Friday with his wife Caitlan Coleman and their three young children after five years in captivity. Boyle said his captors killed his daughter and raped Coleman.
Robert Currie, a professor of international criminal law at Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law, said it’s possible that the kidnappers could be prosecuted in Canada, though there are significant obstacles.
“It is uncommon, but it’s certainly not unheard of. Canada has prosecuted quite a number of extraterritorial crimes,” Currie said, adding that only certain crimes committed abroad can be prosecuted in Canada, including hostage-taking and a number of terrorism-related offences.
For instance, the man alleged to have made ransom demands during Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout’s kidnapping in Somalia is currently standing trial in Ottawa. He was lured to Canada as part of a sting operation.
But Lindhout’s case is one of a rare few, Currie said.
“It’s fairly infrequent, because the preference always is for crimes to be prosecuted in the country that they take place, or the country that most of the elements of the crime take place, because usually — not always but usually — it’s that country that has the most interest in prosecuting them.”
Boyle called on Friday for the Taliban leadership to punish his Haqqani captors. A day later he told The Canadian Press that he wanted to give Taliban leaders “a final chance to actually try to rectify these crimes against humanity, before we turn to other outlets to seek our justice.”
The Taliban denied Boyle’s allegations that his wife was raped and his daughter killed while being held by the Haqqani.
“We categorically reject these false and fabricated claims of the detainees who are in the hands of the enemy. The detainees are currently with the enemy and will say everything defaming being force fed to them,” said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid in a statement.
Mujahid said Boyle and his wife were never separated, so as not to “incite any suspicion,” and they lost their daughter as a result of a “natural miscarriage” in a region without access to doctors.
It’s not yet clear what’s happened to everyone involved in Boyle’s kidnapping. He has described his rescue last Wednesday as involving a shoot-out. His father, Patrick Boyle, told reporters that some of the captors were killed. Joshua Boyle said in a video recorded before he left Pakistan that some of the other captors “ran like cowards” when the Pakistani military started shooting, though the conditions under which the video was shot are unclear.
Should they be caught elsewhere, they could be extradited to Canada under treaties held between the countries. Alternately, they could be brought to Canada under less conventional means like a sting operation, as was the case for one of Lindhout’s accused captors.
Federal justice officials must weigh a number of considerations when determining whether to prosecute in Canada, Currie said.
“It simply needs to be worked out which country has the greatest interest in prosecuting,” he said. Then, it has to be determined whether it’ s even feasible to bring the trial abroad.
Officials must also decide whether it’s worth it to have the trial here.
How many people will need to be transported to Canada? Are most of the witnesses in the country where the crime occurred? Will physical evidence need to be brought over? Will testimony or evidence need to be translated into another language?
There are costs associated with the answers to these questions, Currie said, meaning it can sometimes be more expensive to prosecute a foreign case in Canada.
It’s unclear whether the Canadian government is considering trying to prosecute any of the surviving kidnappers. Justice officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer declined to say whether he’d push for the kidnappers to be prosecuted in Canada, but said in a statement that members of the Haqqani network must be brought to justice.