Boyle’s first court appearance a brief one
Former hostage facing 15 charges will remain in custody ahead of bail hearing
OTTAWA— Joshua Boyle, the former hostage in Afghanistan and Pakistan who is charged with sexual assault, unlawful confinement and other offences, briefly appeared in court Wednesday morning.
Boyle is accused of a slew of crimes that are alleged to have occurred since his high-profile rescue from captivity in October, when he was released from five years of captivity with his American wife and three children.
Boyle, 34, faces 15 charges that include eight counts of assault, two counts of sexual assault, two counts of forcible confinement, one count of uttering death threats, one count of misleading police and one count of giving someone a noxious substance.
He appeared in court by video, standing in an orange jumpsuit. His thinning hair was slightly messy and a wispy beard covered his cheeks and chin.
He nodded repeatedly with a tight smile as the judge explained he will remain in custody until his next court appearance on Jan. 8 to arrange a bail hearing. Then Boyle asked, “I may depart now?”
“Yes,” the judge replied, and Boyle walked off screen.
His lawyer Eric Granger was not in court Wednesday.
A court order prevents the publication of information that would identify any alleged victims in the case.
Boyle and his wife, Caitlan, were backpacking in Afghanistan in October 2012 when they were captured by the Taliban-linked Haqqani network. Over the next five years, the couple has said they were held hostage in a series of hideouts on both sides of the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In interviews after their release, Caitlan has said that she was raped and that her captors dosed her with estrogen to terminate one of her pregnancies that occurred during captivity.
The forced abortion resulted in a stillborn child, which they named “Martyr,” she told the Star in Octo- ber. She gave birth to three other children while she was a hostage, and told the Star she delivered them by flashlight with the help of her husband.
Their captivity ended in October, when they were placed in the trunk of their captors’ car to be transported. Sometime afterwards, a gunfight broke out, and Boyle later told the Star he was hit with shrapnel during the melee.
The family was rescued by Pakistani security forces and flew to Canada Oct. 13.
They returned to intense media attention that began with Boyle giving interviews at the airport.
Weeks later, in mid-December, the family met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in his office and tweeted photos of the occasion, which show the prime minister holding one of their kids.
Boyle was previously married to Zaynab Khadr, whose brother Omar Khadr was famously captured as a teenager in Afghanistan.
Khadr pleaded guilty to killing an American soldier and was imprisoned for 10 years at the notorious U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. With files from Michelle Shephard