Caitlan Coleman, 30, of Stewartstown, and her husband, 33-year-old Canadian Joshua Boyle, were kidnapped in Afghanistan in 2012, according to the Associated Press.
Advertisement
In the undated video, Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman plead for help from their governments to stop the Afghan government from executing Taliban-linked prisoners.
“I know this must be very terrifying and horrifying for my family to hear that these men are willing to go to these lengths, but they are”, Coleman, wearing a black headscarf, said in the video. “During their captivity our grandchild was born”, the Boyle and Coleman families said in a joint statement in 2014.
“The fact that the Coleman family is still in captivity despite multiple attempts by Haqqani to work her release and the release of her family underscores the tremendous shortcomings of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the hostage fusion cell”, Rep. Duncan Hunter, a frequent critic of the Obama administration’s hostage policies, told The Daily Beast in a statement.
Last month, Jim and Lyn Coleman revealed that they had received a letter from their daughter in November through a neutral party.
The Daily Beast said the Haqqani network, a Taliban affiliate operating in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, was holding the family captive and made the video and posted it online.
“Thank you for sharing such wonderful news”.
The video is temporarily off line but we are working to bring it back for you.
A Republican lawmaker said Coleman and her family’s plight shows that a new Federal Bureau of Investigation team set up to improve hostage rescue efforts across hasn’t made sufficient progress. He is the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, founder of the feared Haqqani network, an Afghan guerilla warfare group that fights against US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces and the government of Afghanistan. Those videos were released around the time that Bergdahl was freed. Both incidents are assessed to possibly be in retaliation for the recent death sentence given to Haqqani Network leader Siraj Haqqani’s brother Anas.
In May, the Afghan government had hanged six Taliban prisoners.
“The Haqqanis are ticked off”, a counterterrorism official familiar with hostage recovery operations told ABC News.
Advertisement
“Our captors are terrified at the thought of their own mortality approaching and are saying that they will take reprisals on our family”, he added in the video clip. They warned their captors will kill them and their children unless the demands are met.
