American woman held hostage in Afghanistan rushed to hospital days after being freed

A Canadian woman who was held captive in Afghanistan with her husband and children for five years has been hospitalized, just days after being rescued and brought back to Canada with her family.

The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that Joshua Boyle’s wife Caitlan Coleman had been rushed to hospital on Monday and remains there, although he has not disclosed why.

This comes as questions continue to swirl around what the couple was doing in Afghanistan in the first place, and in light of comments from Coleman’s father that he was angry with Boyle for taking his then-pregnant daughter to the “dangerous” country.

Coleman and her Canadian husband Boyle were kidnapped in 2012 by members of the Taliban-linked Haqqani network while on what’s been described by family members as a backpacking trip. Coleman, originally from Pennsylvania, was seven months pregnant at the time—she gave birth three times in captivity and Boyle has alleged she was forced by their captors to abort their fourth child.

“Taking your pregnant wife to a very dangerous place, to me, and the kind of person I am, is unconscionable,” Jim Coleman, Coleman’s father, told ABC News in an interview on Friday.

While some reports say the couple was in Afghanistan on a ‘backpacking trip,’ Boyle has described himself and his wife as ‘pilgrims’ who had travelled to Afghanistan to help the ‘most neglected minority group in the world.’

“Those ordinary villagers who live deep inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where no NGO, no aid worker and no government has ever successfully been able to bring the necessary help,” said Boyle.

Many have speculated that the couple had other intentions for the trip based on Coleman’s father’s remarks, the fact that Boyle was once married to the sister of Omar Khadr, the Canadian held for 10 years in Guantanamo Bay, and his refusal to allow his family to get an American military plane to be flown out of Pakistan.

But Boyle has firmly shut down the insinuations.

“I’m a harmless hippie, and I do not kill even mice,” he told the Toronto Star. “I’ve been vegetarian for 17 years. Anybody who knows me would laugh at the notion that I went with designs on becoming a combatant.”

The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that Coleman had been rushed to the hospital for an unspecified reason, and remains there.

“We really just need the world to have some patience and compassion, some propriety and decorum,” he wrote in an email to the news outlet. “Please, give it a couple days.”

“My first concern has to be the health of my wife and children,” Boyle wrote.

Speaking with reporters after the couple landed in Toronto’s airport on Friday, Boyle said their captors, members of the Taliban-linked Haqqani network, raped his wife repeatedly and ordered authorized killing of his daughter.

“The stupidity and the evil of the Haqqani network’s kidnapping of a pilgrim and his heavily pregnant wife … was eclipsed only by the stupidity and evil of authorizing the murder of my infant daughter,” Boyle told reporters. “And the stupidity and evil of the subsequent rape of my wife, not as a lone action, by one guard, but assisted by the captain of the guard and supervised by the commandant.”

In a surprising statement on Sunday, the Taliban denied this, claiming that the child had died as a result of a miscarriage.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid called the accusations of rape “fabricated” and said the couple hadn’t ever been separated for more than a few minutes, in an interview with the New York Times. “The reason for that was to avoid any suspicions,” he said.

If the Taliban had any intentions of killing or harming the couple, they would not have gone home with three children, said their statement.

The couple was rescued by Pakistani troops, who say they acted hours after receiving a tip from American intelligence.

In his ABC interview, Coleman’s father Jim also raised questions about why Boyle wouldn’t let the family fly out of Pakistan on an American military aircraft and opted instead to take the family to Canada.

“I don’t know what five years of captivity would do to somebody, but if it were me, if I saw a US aircraft and US soldiers, I’d be running for it,” he said.