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Canadian Held Hostage in Afghanistan Says Militants Killed His Child Canadian Held Hostage in Afghanistan Says Militants Killed His Child
(about 7 hours later)
OTTAWA — A Canadian man who was held hostage with his American wife and children in Afghanistan by a Taliban faction for five years said late Friday that his captors had killed their infant daughter and raped his wife. OTTAWA — Joshua Boyle called himself a “pilgrim” who was “engaged in helping” in Afghanistan.
The former hostage, Joshua Boyle, 34, who was seized in October 2012 by the Haqqani network with his pregnant wife, Caitlan Coleman, 31, lashed out at his captors in a statement he read to reporters after landing in Toronto with Ms. Coleman and three young children who were born during captivity. While he was a frequent editor of Wikipedia articles and an avid participant in online gaming forums — who adopted the names of obscure Star Wars characters as his handle — Mr. Boyle was otherwise virtually invisible on social media. The son of a devout Christian, he was once married to an outspoken defender of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The family was rescued after a gun battle on Wednesday between the militants and Pakistani troops acting on information provided by American intelligence. Mr. Boyle, 34, who is from Breslau, Ontario, and his American wife Caitlan Coleman, 31, were freed along with their three children on Thursday after five years as hostages of the Haqqani network in Afghanistan, which seized them in October 2012, while they were hiking. They arrived in Toronto early Saturday morning.
One of the abductors shouted, “Kill the hostages,” and Mr. Boyle suffered minor shrapnel wounds to a leg during the raid, his parents said. The family was later taken by helicopter to Islamabad, Pakistan, before flying to Canada. Emerging from a room at the Toronto airport — where his children, all born in captivity, met their Canadian grandparents for the first time — Mr. Boyle denounced his captors in brief remarks to reporters and gave more details of their horrific ordeal.
His hands sometimes shaking as he read from a small notebook at the airport, Mr. Boyle said, “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 also revealed that the couple had a fourth child, saying she was killed by their captors.
The birth and killing of the infant had not been previously revealed. Mr. Boyle said she had been killed after he refused to accept “an offer” from the militants. He did not elaborate or take questions. But he offered little insight into what compelled himself and his wife on their journey in the first place.
In a video made during their captivity, Ms. Coleman, who is from Pennsylvania, said that she had been “defiled.” Visibly angry, Mr. Boyle said on Friday that his wife had been raped by a guard with the assistance of the guard’s superiors. He demanded action against “criminal miscreants” for their actions against his family. “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 said.
Ms. Coleman and the three children did not appear. The Toronto Star reported that they were being taken by a police van for a four-hour drive to the home of Mr. Boyle’s parents in Smiths Falls, Ontario. Mr. Boyle said his daughter, Margaret, had been killed after he refused to accept “an offer” from the militants. He did not elaborate or take questions.
The brief statement from Mr. Boyle only raised further questions about why the couple were in Afghanistan when they were abducted. Until Friday, their family had said they were backpacking. According to a local newspaper account, Mr. Boyle grew up in a small town northwest of Toronto and attended a Mennonite high school in Kitchener, Ontario.
But in his statement, Mr. Boyle said they had been in the country on a mission to help “the most neglected minority group in the world, those ordinary villagers who live deep inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.” He also described himself as a “pilgrim,” and said they had been in a region that government and aid agencies had failed to reach, suggesting that their effort was self-styled. He was an avid online gamer, said several other players of the “Star Wars Combine” role-playing game, where he was well known by his aliases “Keir Santage” and “Teniel Djo,” obscure characters associated with the Star Wars films.
The Associated Press reported that on the plane from London to Toronto, Ms. Coleman sat in the aisle of the business-class cabin wearing a tan-color head scarf and nodded wordlessly to confirm her identity to a reporter onboard the flight. Their two oldest children sat next to her, while Mr. Boyle sat with their youngest child in his lap. A Facebook page for Star Wars Combine players shared the news of his release, where several users reacted with excitement over the news about their old friend’s freedom.
State Department officials accompanied them on the plane. One player, Alex Edwards, 32, from Carleton Place, Ontario, said the two had been friends since 2002, when they met in the online game and at one point in time talked three or four times a week.
President Trump has praised the Pakistanis for their role in freeing the family. “This is a positive moment for our country’s relationship with Pakistan,” he said on Thursday. They soon realized they lived close to one another and eventually met in person.
During the flight, Mr. Boyle also gave a handwritten statement to The A.P. expressing disagreement with American foreign policy. Mr. Edwards described Mr. Boyle as an “extremely private person.” He added, “Josh stayed off social media.”
“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. According to his online friends, he and his wife met during their teenage years in an online Star Wars forum but did not start a romantic relationship until later on.
He then nodded to one of the State Department officials and said, according to The A.P., “Their interests are not my interests.” Other friends who knew Mr. Boyle through the online gaming world said he always had an interest in Afghan history and the role the Taliban played in the country.
While studying at the nearby University of Waterloo, where he graduated in 2005, Mr. Boyle became immersed in writing and editing Wikipedia entries about Islam and terrorism.
The case of Omar Khadr, the only Canadian held by the United State military in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, eventually became a cause for Mr. Boyle.
About 2008, he offered his services as a spokesman to Mr. Khadr’s family. Within the year, he became the third husband of Mr. Khadr’s sister, Zaynab, an outspoken defender of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Edwards said that Mr. Boyle, under the Wikipedia user name Sherurcij, which also sometimes included the first name “Josh,” had spent a lot of time editing and updating the Wikipedia page of his former brother-in-law. His other contributions were largely focused on members of the Khadr family, Canadian politics and some posts on Nazi history, among others.
He also made contributions to pages that focused on other terrorism incidents around the world and the profiles of those involved.
His user page also included a note at the bottom, in Arabic, that said “Peace is the solution.”
His marriage to Ms. Khadr lasted just a year. Mr. Boyle then took a job at a hotel reservation call center in Perth-Andover, New Brunswick, a tiny village where he bought a house.
One of his former co-workers at the call center said in an interview that two things defined Mr. Boyle: his strong convictions and his desire to bring change to troubled parts of the world.
“I think he really did believe that he could personally make a difference by getting in with the common people,” said Terry Ritchie, who is now retired.
Mr. Ritchie, who during Mr. Boyle’s time in captivity pressured Canadian politicians on his behalf, recalled him as excessively idealistic, someone he crossed to the street to avoid.
“He was absolutely smug about his convictions,” Mr. Ritchie said.
Mr. Ritchie said his co-worker kept a prayer rug at the call center and had permission to use a room for prayers, suggesting that Mr. Boyle had become a Muslim.
In a video released by the military in Pakistan after Mr. Boyle’s release, Mr. Boyle, sitting beside an exhausted looking Ms. Coleman and their children, repeatedly insisted that their captors were not Muslims.
“The men who kidnapped us did not even make a pretense of being Muslim,” he said. “They were undoubtedly criminals, they were undoubtedly pagans, they were directed by commanders who were not guided by Islam and who were not even pretending they were guided by Islam.
He added: “The criminals who held us they were not good Muslims, they were not even bad Muslims. They were pagan.”
Ms. Coleman arrived in Perth-Andover soon after the couple were married on a hiking trip in Central America. Not long afterward they went on the trip that led to their capture and confinement.
Before the couple returned home, Patrick and Linda Boyle, Mr. Boyle’s parents expressed their concerns about the adjustments facing him, his wife and the three children who have had no life except as hostages.
While Mr. Boyle called for justice against his captors late on Friday, he also acknowledged the task now awaiting him.
“It will be of incredible importance to my family that we are able to build a secure sanctuary for our three surviving children to call a home, to focus on edification and to try to regain some portion of the childhood that they have lost,” he said at the airport.