American woman, Canadian husband and children freed in Pakistan after 5-year hostage ordeal

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Taliban-linked faction has freed an American woman and her Canadian husband who were abducted more than five years ago and had three children in captivity, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Thursday.x

The Pakistani military said in a statement that the couple and their three children were found "through an intelligence-based operation" in coordination with U.S. agencies tracking the hostages along the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The statement, however, gave no further details of the rescue effort staged Wednesday or possible casualties. The White House praised it as a "positive" sign of closer cooperation with Pakistan on counterterrorism efforts.

Caitlan Coleman of Stewartstown, Pa., and her husband, Joshua Boyle, were abducted in October 2012 while traveling in Afghanistan and were held in Pakistan by the Haqqani network, a militant faction with ties to the Taliban.

Coleman was pregnant when she was captured. The couple had three children while being held captive.

"All hostages were recovered safe and sound and are being repatriated to the country of their origin," the Pakistan military said.

The release came just after the fifth anniversary of the couple's disappearance while traveling in a mountainous region near the Afghan capital, Kabul, as part of a journey through Russia and Central Asia.

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

In another video made public last year, the couple said they feared their family could be executed in retaliation for Western attacks and pressure. Coleman clutched at a headscarf. Boyle had a long, untrimmed beard.

"Our captors are terrified at the thought of their own mortality approaching and are saying that they will take reprisals on our own family," Boyle said. "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."

Coleman also spoke about the threat to their family, saying the captors were "willing to kill us, willing to kill women, to kill children, to kill whomever to get these policies reversed or to take revenge."

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told the Associated Press that the video was recorded in 2015.

The release also could help ease tensions between United States and Pakistan over efforts against the Taliban and other militant groups along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Pakistan's military said U.S. intelligence agencies had been tracking the hostages and discovered they had crossed into Pakistan on Wednesday.

"Today they are free," the White House said in a statement. "This is a positive moment for our country's relationship with Pakistan."

Coleman's parents, Jim and Lyn Coleman, told the online Circa News service in July 2016 that they received a letter from their daughter in November 2015, in which she wrote that she had given birth to a second child in captivity. It was not immediately clear whether they knew she had borne a third, the Associated Press reported.

"I pray to hear from you again, to hear how everybody is doing," the letter said.

—

Murphy reported from Washington. Andrew deGrandpre in Washington contributed to this report.