A screenshot of the captured couple.
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan- The Taliban has released a video of a hostage from Pennsylvania and her Canadian husband.
“They will execute us, women and children included, if the policies of the Afghan government are not overturned either by the Afghan government or by Canada somehow, or United States”, said Joshua, in the video.
Multiple sources report the video is meant to to pressure the Afghan government not to execute the son of a feared militant leader.
The Afghan Intelligence, National Directorate of Security (NDS), said the militants belonged to Quetta Council, a term normally referenced to the Taliban group and Haqqani Network leadership based in Pakistan.
On a backpacking trip to Afghanistan in 2012, American Joshua Boyle and his Canadian wife Caitlan Coleman were kidnapped by the Taliban and held hostage ever since. They warned their captors will kill them and their children unless the demands are met.
The Colemans received a letter last November in which their daughter said she had given birth to a second child in captivity.
Boyle and Coleman were seized in 2012 while traveling in a mountainous region near the Afghan capital, Kabul. “And therefore we ask Canada and the United States to change the policies of the Afghan government so that our captors do not have to face the fear of execution in the future, and that we will – our family – will be able to live safely”. Two years ago, the Obama administration carried out a controversial prisoner swap of five Taliban commanders held at Guantanamo Bay for U.S. Army Sgt.
“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. Coleman in the video pleads for USA intervention. Two videos appeared in 2014 in which they asked for American help in securing their release.
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“As a man, father and now grandfather, I am asking you to show mercy and release my daughter, her husband, and our lovely grandchildren”, Jim Coleman said.
