Joshua Boyle: what really happened to family held by Taliban?

An American woman held hostage by the Taliban for five years says her husband beat and abused her throughout their ordeal.

Caitlan Coleman and her Canadian husband, Joshua Boyle, were abducted in October 2012 while backpacking through Afghanistan - a trip she now claims was organised by Boyle, whom she alleges did not inform her that they would be visiting the country until they arrived in Central Asia.

Coleman, who was pregnant at the time, eventually gave birth to three children in captivity. The family were moved between 19 hideouts in Afghanistan and Pakistan before finally being rescued in a Pakistani army raid in October 2017 and returned to Canada.

In July this year, it was reported that Coleman had returned to the US with the couple’s children, pending a Canadian court’s decision over custody of their two sons and daughter.

According to newly unsealed court documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen, Coleman claims that Boyle “became increasingly erratic and irrational” towards her and eventually “instituted corporal punishment” for perceived misdeeds.

She alleges that her husband has a long-standing interest in “extremist ideologies and in the complete subservience of women”.

Boyle was previously married to a Muslim Canadian woman whose two brothers were once detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and has “made a series of contradictory claims about their reasons for traveling to Afghanistan”, ABC News reports.

In her affidavit, Coleman says the abuse became increasingly violent, with Boyle confining her to a shower stall for weeks at a time and once striking her “hard enough to break [her] cheekbone”. She also claims he threatened to set her on fire.

However, Boyle’s own account to the court paints a completely contradictory picture. He alleges that Coleman “assaulted him and neglected their children because of untreated mental health issues” during their five-year captivity, says the Ottawa Citizen.

For his part, Boyle says he looked after all three children single-handedly and “often went without food… to give more to his children or pregnant wife, and spent hours whittling toys and gifts for them with a spoon”.

The 34-year-old was arrested by Ottawa police in December last year and is currently on bail awaiting trial on charges including physical and sexual assault of a woman and physical assault of a child. He denies any wrongdoing.