This is just weird, starting with a hiking trip when the wife was in the later stages of pregnancy. I’m glad they are now safe but it seems like there is a lot more to this story.
I’m still trying to picture how they justified having TWO MORE CHILDREN while in captivity
No birth control?
I would say intelligence agencies need to keep a close eye on the hubby…
Stockholm Syndrome?
The couple was kidnapped in October of 2012 while on a backpacking trip that took them to Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and then to Afghanistan.
I’m sure it looked fabulous in the brochure.
Yeah, in Afghanistan.
This is suspect, too:
"…Boyle’s father said his son did not want to board the plane because it was headed to Bagram Air Base and the family wanted to return directly to North America. Another U.S. official said Boyle was nervous about being in “custody” given his family ties.
He was once married to Zaynab Khadr, the older sister of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr and the daughter of a senior al-Qaida financier. Her father, the late Ahmed Said Khadr, and the family stayed with Osama bin Laden briefly when Omar Khadr was a boy…"
Just like the Wambiers letting their son go to North Korea.
I suspect the timing was accidental, and that they were planning this trip months ahead of time, which would mean she got pregnant after. My guess is that they found themselves saying “now or never” and decided to get it in before the baby was born.
Her “humanitarian” bent as described by her father suggests that this was a cultural connections trip more than a hiking trip, and I can see how that would be important enough for someone who was about to lose the flexibility of international travel, particularly to regions like this that would pique her humanitarian interest.
All speculation on my part, of course.
I don’t know that it’s particularly suspect. Omar Khadr was Canadian, and appears to have been a childhood friend of Boyle’s in Canada, which would make the marriage to his sister not particularly strange if they all grew up together. It would certainly help a young Boyle develop an interest in the region if he were interested in where his friend’s family came from. But that’s a far cry from radicalization, in a vacuum.
I imagine that the Pakastani Taliban has the same view of BC as the American Taliban.
no sense - would you bring 2 more kids into a hostage situation? something about this story doesn’t seem right.
Coitus interruptus. Foregoing sex. Rhythm method. Combination of any of the three.
I’m assuming the couple in the picture are not the people who were rescued, and rather are the husband’s parents since it’s apparently from the Canadian press.But, it would have been nice for the AP to include a caption identifying who they are, because I guess it could just be some random folks with microphones in their faces talking about the Toronto Maple Leafs.
each of them had one ally in there, one person who could give them strength. I’m not going to judge them for holding on to what little they had of normalcy on this one. They’ve undoubtedly suffered plenty.