Rescued family lands in Canada
In air, husband notes his disagreement with U.S. foreign policy
TORONTO — U.S.-Canadian couple Caitlan Coleman and Joshua Boyle landed in Canada late Friday, five years after they were kidnapped in Afghanistan. They arrived with their three children, who were all born in captivity.
The five were rescued Wednesday when Pakistani forces, alerted by U.S. intelligence, ambushed a convoy of Islamic extremists transporting the hostages near the Afghan border.
The final leg of the family’s journey was an Air Canada flight Friday from London to Toronto.
Coleman, wearing a tan-colored headscarf, sat in the aisle of the business-class cabin. She nodded wordlessly when she confirmed her identity to a reporter on board the flight. In the two seats next to her were two of her 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.
Boyle gave The Associated Press a handwritten statement expressing 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 one of the State Department officials and said, “Their interests are not my interests.”
He added that one of his children is in poor health and had to be force-fed by their Pakistani rescuers.
The family got to leave the plane with their escorts before the rest of the passengers. There was a delay of five to 10 minutes before everyone else was allowed out.
After the family landed, Boyle gave a statement saying the Haqqani network in Afghanistan killed his infant daughter in captivity and raped his wife.
The Canadian government said in a statement that it was rejoicing over the family’s return.
“Canada has been actively engaged on Mr. Boyle’s case at all levels, and we will continue to support him and his family now that they have returned,” the Canadian government said.
Coleman’s father had earlier questioned his Canadian son-in-law’s decision to take his pregnant wife hiking in Afghanistan and, upon release, his refusal to fly home on an American military plane.
In an interview with ABC News’ Good Morning America, Jim Coleman of Stewartstown, Pa., said he remained angry that Boyle took Caitlan Coleman into Afghanistan in 2012, when they were abducted by Islamic extremists affiliated with the Taliban.
“Taking your pregnant wife to a very dangerous place, to me, and the kind of person I am, is unconscionable,” he said.
Jim Coleman also criticized Boyle’s refusal to return to North America aboard a U.S. military plane.
“I don’t know what five years in captivity would do to somebody, but if I saw a U.S. aircraft and U.S. soldiers, I’d be running for it,” he said.
CNN, quoting an unidentified senior U.S. official, said Boyle balked because he feared possible arrest on American soil.
Boyle previously had been married to the sister of Omar Khadr, a Canadian who spent 10 years at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after being captured in 2002 in a firefight at an al-Qaida compound in Afghanistan.
But a Department of Justice spokesman told CNN that Boyle did not face arrest in the United States.
Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Nafees Zakaria said the 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 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 traveled to the region several times but disappeared in eastern Afghanistan in mid-2014.