Canadian says child killed, U.S. wife raped during Afghan kidnapping
Joshua Boyle said upon arriving back in Canada the Haqqani network in Afghanistan had killed his infant daughter and raped his wife during the years they were held in captivity.
The couple, Caitlan Coleman and Joshua Boyle was rescued on Wednesday, five years after they had been abducted by the Taleban-linked extremist network while in Afghanistan as part of a backpacking trip. Coleman was pregnant at the time and had four children in captivity. The birth of the fourth child had not been publicly known before Boyle appeared before journalists at the Toronto airport.
Boyle said he was in Afghanistan to help villagers “who live deep inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan where no NGO, no aid worker and no government have ever successfully been able to bring the necessary help.”
“The stupidity and evil of the Haqqani network’s kidnapping of a pilgrim and his heavily pregnant wife engaged in helping ordinary villagers in Taliban-controlled regions of Afghanistan was eclipsed only by the stupidity and evil of authorizing the murder of my infant daughter,” he added.
The handwritten statement Boyle gave AP news agency expressed disagreement with US 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.
