American hostage mom says abusive husband's Taliban sympathies led to 5-year ordeal. 'I was actually more afraid of him than of the captors.'
It was a story that generated headlines around the world. A young pregnant American woman Caitlan Coleman and her Canadian husband Joshua Boyle captured by the Taliban while hiking in war-torn Afghanistan. Grainy hostage videos posted online showing two of their young children born into captivity. And in 2017, the sudden release and return of a family of five to Canada, where a baffled public was eagerly awaiting an explanation.
While his trial is on hiatus during appeals related to Coleman's testimony, she is speaking out for the first time about what she described as a dizzying web of lies Boyle has told to protect himself as he sought to keep her quiet about the full extent of her ordeal. At a press conference shortly after their arrival in Canada, Boyle suggested that they had been aid workers, “engaged in helping ordinary villagers in Taliban-controlled regions of Afghanistan,” though they had no affiliation with any aid groups and no prior experience in humanitarian work.
Years earlier, Boyle protested the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and then was briefly married to Zaynab Khadr, the Canadian daughter of a senior al Qaeda aide to Osama Bin Laden. He expected that this affiliation would help him win the trust of the militants, Coleman said, and “sort of get the real story of the Taliban.”
But even in captivity, where they lacked access to any basic medical care, their family continued to grow. Coleman miscarried their second child, which they named Martyr, after she says the guards put a chemical in her food. They had two more children in captivity and became pregnant with another who was born after their release.
In a 2017 interview with ABC News, Boyle claimed a guard had struck Coleman, breaking her cheekbone. The guards were sometimes rough, Coleman said, but “it was actually Josh who broke it, by hitting me.”"I certainly felt like I was still a prisoner,” Coleman said. “There wasn't actually a big change in my life from when we were still in Pakistan in the hands of the Haqqanis and when I was in the Embassy Suites Hotel [in Ottawa] with Josh.
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