Taliban reject rape, murder claims of freed Canadian hostage
AFPOctober
15, 2017
The Taliban
on Sunday 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 Caitlan Coleman were seized by the Taliban while hiking in
Afghanistan in 2012. The couple and their three children born in captivity were
freed on Wednesday in a Pakistani military operation
triggered by US intelligence and are now back in Canada.
After
landing in Toronto on Friday, Boyle had 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 had 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 baby had died.
"During
a period of detention an incident did take place when the woman became ill. The
area was remote, no doctors were present and due to this severe condition, the
woman had a natural miscarriage of a girl," Mujahid said in a statement.
"The
allegations floating around in the media have nothing to do with the reality
because the said people are now in the hands of our enemy."
The Haqqani
group is headed by Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is also the Afghan Taliban's deputy
leader.
Providing
few details, Boyle had said that the death of his daughter and his wife's rape
occurred in 2014.
That was two
years after he and Coleman, then "heavily pregnant", were kidnapped
in a remote Taliban-controlled area of Afghanistan.
He
said they were in the war-torn country as "pilgrims" helping poor
villagers
when they were captured.
NEWS REPORTED BY DAWN
CORROSPONDENT: PAKISTAN
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