Father directs ire at ex-hostage

He says son-in-law’s Afghan hike led pregnant wife into peril

PHILADELPHIA — The father of a freed hostage is questioning his Canadian son-in-law’s decision to take his pregnant wife hiking in Afghanistan and, upon release after five years in captivity, his refusal to fly home on an American military plane.

Caitlan Coleman; her husband, Joshua Boyle; and the three children she bore while in captivity were rescued Wednesday when Pakistani forces, alerted by U.S. intelligence, ambushed a convoy of Islamic extremists transporting the hostages near the Afghan border.

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.

The freed family, meanwhile, was reported to be en route to Toronto after Boyle refused to return to North America aboard a U.S. military plane.

That did not sit well with Jim Coleman.

“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. Khadr, who was accused of throwing a grenade that killed an American medic, was 15 when he was taken prisoner.

But a Department of Justice spokesman told CNN that Boyle did not face arrest in the United States.

Boyle’s father, Patrick Boyle, said his son simply wanted to return straight home.

“He wants to be home,” the father told CNN from his home in Canada. “He couldn’t have made it more clear.”

Two Pakistani security officials said the family left by plane from Islamabad on Friday. The officials did not say where the family was headed, but Joshua Boyle’s family has said the couple plan to return to Canada. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with official protocol.

Caitlan Coleman’s mother, Lynda, said the opportunity to finally speak to her daughter after she was freed was “incredible.”

“I’ve been waiting to hear that voice for so long, and then to hear her voice and have it sound exactly like the last time I talked to her,” she said.

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 long accused Pakistan of ignoring groups like the Haqqani network, which was holding the family.

U.S. officials call the Haqqani group a terrorist organization and have targeted its leaders with drone strikes. But the group also operates like a criminal network. Unlike the Islamic State militant group, it does not typically execute Western hostages, preferring to ransom them for cash.

The Haqqani network had previously demanded the release of Anas Haqqani, a son of the founder of the group, in exchange for turning over the American-Canadian family. In one of the videos released by his captors, Boyle implored the Afghan government not to execute Taliban prisoners, saying it would lead to he and his wife being killed.

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.