Canadian Joshua Boyle, his American wife Caitlan Coleman and their children are finally free after five years held hostage in Pakistan by the Taliban-linked Haqqani network.Boyle called his parents early Thursday morning to tell of their rescue. He also told his father that they’ve had a third baby in custody, a little girl who was born two months ago. “Josh said he was doing pretty well for someone who has spent the last five years in an underground prison,” Patrick Boyle told the Star early Thursday, about his conversation with his son. The young family is still in Pakistan and plans were underway midday Thursday to fly them home. Boyle told his parents that he was in the trunk of the kidnappers’ car with his wife and children, when Pakistani forces rescued them. There was a shoot out and Boyle said the last words he heard from the kidnappers were, “kill the hostages.”All five kidnappers were then shot dead and Boyle was injured with shrapnel.They are reportedly traumatized by both the violence of the Thursday morning rescue and their long captivity, but healthy and recovering. Boyle, 34, and Coleman, 31, were kidnapped by the Haqqani network in October 2012. Coleman was five-months pregnant at the time and the couple was backpacking through Central Asia.Their families did not know they had crossed into Afghanistan. Coleman gave birth to her first son in custody, followed by a second boy a few years later. In a letter to his parents from captivity, Boyle described delivering the child in secret, by flashlight.“Ta-da!” he wrote. “The astonished captors were good and brought all our postpartum needs, so he is now fat and healthy, praise God.” A “proof-of-life” video showed the children alive for the first time last December.In the video, Coleman appeals to the U.S. and Afghan government, calling their plight “Kafkaesque.”The couple’s daughter was born this summer. Pakistan& ...
|
