[BI-Rooters] A Taliban spokesman denied on Sunday accusations by a Canadian man that one of his children had been murdered and his wife raped while they were being held captive by militants who kidnapped them in Afghanistan in 2012.
Joshua Boyle and his American wife, Caitlan Coleman, were held by the Haqqani network, a semi-independent wing of the Afghan Taliban, before being rescued by Pakistani troops in northwest Pakistan, near the Afghan border, last week.
Boyle told reporters soon after he, his wife and their three children returned to Canada on Friday that their captors had murdered a fourth child and raped his wife.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid rejected that as propaganda by the Western governments that helped rescue the family. Mujahid said the couple was intentionally never separated in order to protect their safety. He also denied that their child had been murdered, but acknowledged that one child became sick and died.
The U.S. government calls the Haqqani network "the most lethal and sophisticated insurgent group" in Afghanistan. Its operational chief, Sirajuddin Haqqani, was named deputy to the Taliban's newly appointed leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour in 2015, cementing the ties between the groups. 
|
