Canadian says child killed, US wife raped during Afghan kidnapping

They arrived in Canada with three of their children.

Joshua Boyle, his American wife and three children arrived in Toronto on Friday after being freed from captivity in Pakistan, the Canadian government announced.

Boyle gave the statement shortly after landing in Canada late Friday with his wife, Caitlan Coleman, and three young children.

The couple 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.

"The stupidity and evil of the Haqqani network's kidnapping of a pilgrim and his heavily pregnant wife engaged in helping ordinary villagers in Taleban-controlled regions of Afghanistan was eclipsed only by the stupidity and evil of authorising the murder of my infant daughter," he said.

Boyle said his wife was raped by a guard who was assisted by his superiors. He asked for the Afghan government to bring them to justice.

He said he was in Afghanistan to help villagers "who live deep inside Taleban-controlled Afghanistan where no NGO, no aid worker and no government has ever successfully been able to bring the necessary help."

On the plane from London, Boyle provided a written statement to The Associated Press saying his family has "unparalleled resilience and determination."

Coleman, who is from Stewartstown, Pennsylvania, sat in the aisle of the business-class cabin wearing a tan-coloured headscarf.

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.

The handwritten statement that Boyle gave the AP 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 organised injustice in the world would be a betrayal of all I believe, and tantamount to sacrilege," he wrote.

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