Bail decision for former hostage Joshua Boyle expected Friday

Boyle and his American wife, Caitlan Coleman, were seized in 2012 by a Taliban-linked group while on a backpacking trip in Afghanistan.

The couple — along with the three children they had during five years in captivity — were freed by Pakistani forces last October.

After returning to Canada, the family stayed for several weeks with Boyle’s parents in Smiths Falls, Ont. They had been living in an Ottawa apartment for about a month when Boyle was arrested.

An initial evaluation found Boyle fit to stand trial, but he underwent a fuller assessment at a mental health centre in Brockville, Ont. The confidential psychiatric evaluation was completed earlier this spring.

Lawrence Greenspon, one of Boyle’s lawyers, said earlier this year his client had been taking medication and that he hoped the treatment would continue once Boyle returned to an Ottawa detention centre.

Details of this week’s bail hearing cannot be reported due to a publication ban.

Boyle attended high school in Kitchener, Ont., and earned a degree from the University of Waterloo in 2005.

He was briefly married to Zaynab Khadr, sister of Toronto-born Omar Khadr, who spent years in a U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after being captured in Afghanistan.

In 2011 he married Coleman, who grew up in rural Pennsylvania, during a lengthy trip the pair took to South America.

The following year, they set off for Russia and travelled through Central Asia for several months, winding up in strife-torn Afghanistan.

In an email sent shortly before their capture, Boyle said he was in an Internet cafe in an “unsafe” part of Afghanistan.

In June 2014, Coleman’s family released two videos of their daughter and Boyle in captivity. In the clips, they called on the U.S. government to free them.

Another video was posted to YouTube in August 2016. The couple soberly warned they would be killed by the hostage-takers unless Kabul abandoned its policy of executing captured prisoners. They urged Canada and the United States to pressure Afghanistan into changing its policy.

The family’s dramatic rescue last October made global headlines and prompted a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

— Follow @JimBronskill on Twitter

Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

Bail decision for former hostage Joshua Boyle expected Friday

What's Trending