Taliban rubbishes freed Canadian hostage’s allegation of raping his wife; says child died due to miscarriage
The Taliban today rejected claims by freed Canadian hostage Joshua Boyle that his kidnappers had killed his child and raped his wife during the family’s captivity, saying the woman had a “natural miscarriage”.
Boyle and his American wife were seized by the Taliban while hiking in Afghanistan in 2012, and then turned over to the group’s affiliated militant Haqqani network in Pakistan.
The couple and their three children born in captivity were freed Wednesday in a Pakistani military operation triggered by US intelligence and are now back in Canada.
After landing in Toronto on Friday Boyle accused his captors of killing his baby daughter and raping his wife – accusations which the Taliban said were “fake”.
In a statement read on his arrival Boyle condemned the Haqqani network’s “stupidity and evil of authorising the murder of my infant daughter” in “retaliation for my repeated refusal to accept an offer that the miscreant of the Haqqani network had made to me, and the stupidity and evil of the subsequent rape of my wife”.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Boyle and Coleman were never separated during their captivity, “precisely due to the fact that the mujahideen did not want to incite any suspicion”, but he admitted a …read more
