Rescued Hostage Has Harsh Words for US Interests

And Joshua Boyle says kidnappers killed one of his children
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Oct 14, 2017 5:00 AM CDT
Rescued Hostage Has Harsh Words for US Interests
Joshua Boyle, left, gets a police escort after speaking to the media after arriving at the airport in Toronto on Friday, Oct. 13, 2017.   (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press via AP)

US-Canadian couple Caitlan Coleman and Joshua Boyle landed in Canada late Friday, five years after they were kidnapped in Afghanistan, the AP reports. They arrived with their three young children, who were all born in captivity. Coleman and Boyle were rescued Wednesday, five years after they had been abducted by a Taliban-linked extremist network while in Afghanistan as part of a backpacking trip. Coleman is from Stewartstown, Pennsylvania, and Boyle is Canadian. The final leg of the family's journey was an Air Canada flight Friday from London to Toronto. After landing, Boyle gave a statement saying the Haqqani network in Afghanistan killed his infant daughter in captivity and raped his wife, who was pregnant when the couple was abducted and had four children in captivity.

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 her two elder children. In the seat beyond that was Boyle, with their youngest child in his lap. US State Department officials were on the plane with them. Boyle gave the AP a handwritten statement expressing 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. 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. (More Joshua Boyle stories.)

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