Canadian and his wife, hostages in Afghanistan, plead for lives in video

OTTAWA — A newly released video shows a Canadian man and his American wife, held captive in Afghanistan for almost four years, pleading for government help to save their lives.    

In the video, Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman sombrely warn they will be killed by their captors unless Kabul abandons its policy of executing captured prisoners.

They call on Canada and the United States to pressure Afghanistan into changing its policy, saying their kidnappers are terrified of being executed by the state.

The video, uploaded to YouTube, came to public attention through the Maryland-based Site Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity online. 

Boyle and Coleman were seized in 2012 during a trip that took them to several central Asian countries.

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In October that year, just before the pair went missing, Joshua sent Coleman’s family a message from an Internet cafe in what he described as an “unsafe” part of Afghanistan.

In 2013, the couple appeared in two videos asking the U.S. government to free them from the Taliban.

The Colemans received a letter last November in which their daughter said she had given birth to a second child in captivity.

In a statement Tuesday, Global Affairs Canada spokesman Michael O’Shaughnessy said Canada was aware of the latest video.

The government will not comment further or release any information that might risk endangering the safety of Canadian citizens abroad, he added.

In the video, Boyle says the couple’s captors “are terrified of the thought of their own mortality approaching, and are saying that they will take reprisals on our family.”

“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 the United States.”

Adds Coleman: “I know that 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.”

— With files from the Associated Press

The Canadian Press