Canadian hostage, wife & children freed from Afghanistan, husband arrested for abuse, Oct 2017 #2

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That information linked through Post #826:

"Edwards says when he first heard his friend had travelled to Afghanistan with Coleman - who was seven months pregnant at the time - he couldn't understand how they had "done something so appallingly dangerous".

Family and friends have described Boyle and Coleman as naive idealists - a couple with strong convictions and humanitarian inclinations.

In interviews following their release, Boyle said he and Coleman travelled to Afghanistan to help people. He called himself a "pilgrim" on a mission.

He told reporters he went to help "the most neglected minority group in the world. Those ordinary villagers who live deep inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where no NGO, no aid worker and no government has ever successfully been able to bring the necessary help".​

The story behind this couple's kidnapping

As a teenager, Boyle became a Wikipedia editor — part of the nerdy, often pretentious, male-dominated community that types in content for the world’s largest online encyclopedia. During that time, he was also drawn into online Islamic propaganda. The two interests meshed as Boyle spent thousands of hours of unpaid research and writing on Wikipedia as “Sherurcij.” He claimed to have written most of Wikipedia’s entries on Islamic-inspired terrorism. Friends said he did this research to learn more about what attracted people to extremism, but the interest seems to have seeped from his online life into the real world.

In 2006, police swept up the Toronto 18, a group of hapless would-be terrorists whose bizarre bombing and assassination plots were supposed to climax with the public beheading of the prime minister. Boyle, now Wikipedia’s self-styled authority on Islamic-themed terrorism, showed up at their court hearings. So did Zaynab Khadr and her mother.

Boyle was drawn to these celebrities. Zaynab Khadr, who had become a target of online hatred after she denounced Western morality on a CBC television interview, avoided Boyle because someone in their overlapping circle of friends had told her of Boyle’s fantasy of joining CSIS. But Boyle didn’t give up, and by 2008 they were engaged — and Boyle was acting as the spokesman for the Khadr family.

After she met Boyle, Khadr continued to be a dial-a-quote for journalists looking for inflammatory copy. She obliged with tirades on the decadence of Western child-rearing and justified the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
Boyle always stuck by his wife. “Are any of us honestly able to say that we have never uttered any phrases which, if they ran beside our name in the paper every month for five years, would paint an unflattering mental image in the public perception?” he asked, adding, “Let he without sin cast the first stone.”

They travelled though Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. These are backwaters that few people visit. Boyle claimed he was there to write freelance travel articles for Western media. Coleman had agreed to go if Boyle promised not to go into Afghanistan.

They went to Afghanistan.

Boyle gives differing reasons for going. He says he wanted to do volunteer aid work yet claims in a court document to have been trying to break into journalism. In 2012, the Haqqani, a Taliban-allied group, snatched them from a cab in Kabul. Coleman was five months pregnant.

In her affidavit, she strongly suggests Boyle and his captors were on the same wavelength and she didn’t share their radical ideology. “I would like to stress, most strongly, that for more than a decade, the respondent [Boyle] has had an interest in extremist ideologies and in the complete subservience of women."

From Smiths Falls to Afghanistan to family court: Unravelling the Bizarre Case of Joshua Boyle

An aspiring journalist, Boyle had wanted to meet the Taliban, she said, so that he could “get the real story” since he felt they were misrepresented in the Western media.
Caitlan Coleman recounts abuse by Joshua Boyle while held hostage in Afghanistan

The so-called Toronto 18 case was electric. Sweeping police raids on June 2, 2006, nabbed 18 people accused of planning spectacular terrorist acts, including detonating truck bombs, shooting into crowds, storming the Parliament buildings and beheading Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Zaynab is the eldest daughter of Ahmed Said Khadr, an al-Qaida member and the family had spent years in Afghanistan, including in Osama bin Laden’s compound.

At a time when Boyle’s employment seemed itinerant — there are accounts of him working as a parking lot attendant and in the University of Toronto’s library — Boyle started coming to court as well, friends said. He was solicitous and fawning to the Khadrs.

The Post has discovered that as a Wikipedia editor, Boyle made 809 edits to the online entry on Omar Khadr, Zaynab’s brother, and 377 to Ahmed Said Khadr, Zaynab’s father, his two most active page edits.
His third most active interest was Charles Whitman, an American mass murderer known as the “Texas Tower Sniper” and his fourth the Wikipedia entry on Ahnenerbe, a Nazi Germany project to research the history of the Aryan race.

The many winding paths of Joshua Boyle
 
On New Year’s Eve 2005, shortly before midnight, he edited an entry on “List of events named massacres” and two hours after midnight edited “Foreign hostages in Iraq.”

Snip

Boyle waged an internal Wikipedia fight for a year over the use of gruesome photos of the murdered children of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister. He first sought out the images, saying he would be “forever indebted” if someone found them, and then championed their use despite complaints they were “depraved” and “ghastly.” Boyle angrily responded: “Let’s nix the offensively crude depictions of death on crucifix and Jesus Christ as well… btw, this is sarcasm.”

One editor said Boyle’s passion for using multiple images of the children’s bodies left him “extremely worried.” Unwilling to let it go, Boyle amended his Wikipedia signature to “Speaker for the Dead.” The current entry uses none of the photos.

Other controversial photos he added include a 1910 photo of a sexually-abused German boy that an editor quickly deleted saying it was “extreme.” Boyle added it a second time saying “nothing wrong with image.” The photo is not currently in use. He also added photos from the 1940s of examples of human cannibalism.

From Nazi women and Khadrs to Star Wars and torture: A look at Joshua Boyle’s vast Wikipedia edits
 
Why is it important to describe Coleman as incompetent and unable to make decisions in 2012? That's not what her family says. Furthermore, Coleman's version of reality must now be severely distorted due to her experience in captivity. I'm sure they blamed each other many times for the mess they were in.

Why are you so determined to find excuses for Boyle? Coleman in court is described as calm and her testimony has been clear and rational, unlike his. In 2012, as others have said, regardless of her competence or her own wishes, Coleman was in no position to leave on her own.
 
Other controversial photos he added include a 1910 photo of a sexually-abused German boy that an editor quickly deleted saying it was “extreme.” Boyle added it a second time saying “nothing wrong with image.” The photo is not currently in use. He also added photos from the 1940s of examples of human cannibalism.

From Nazi women and Khadrs to Star Wars and torture: A look at Joshua Boyle’s vast Wikipedia edits
above post was shortened with respect

Wait a minute. Was this a naked photo of the sexually abused boy? Why would Josh have a photo of a sexually abused child on his computer?

What else is on his computer? It should be searched. It's the government's job to protect the public from child predators.

Remember that Caitlan told the judge that Josh wanted her to join internet forums geared towards teens and find teenagers for him to sexually exploit (her Skellington forums comment).
 
Last edited:
above post was shortened with respect

Wait a minute. Was this a naked photo of the sexually abused boy? Why would Josh have a photo of a sexually abused child on his computer?

What else is on his computer? It should be searched.

Remember that Caitlan told the judge that Josh wanted her to join internet forums geared towards teens and find teenagers for him to sexually exploit (her Skellington forums comment).

JB was a manipulative sicko long before Afghanistan. His controlling, abusive, and all around terrible behavior is not a product of captivity. It is just who he is as a person. Just my opinion... I am sure others will disagree.
 
On New Year’s Eve 2005, shortly before midnight, he edited an entry on “List of events named massacres” and two hours after midnight edited “Foreign hostages in Iraq.”

Snip

Boyle waged an internal Wikipedia fight for a year over the use of gruesome photos of the murdered children of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister. He first sought out the images, saying he would be “forever indebted” if someone found them, and then championed their use despite complaints they were “depraved” and “ghastly.” Boyle angrily responded: “Let’s nix the offensively crude depictions of death on crucifix and Jesus Christ as well… btw, this is sarcasm.”

One editor said Boyle’s passion for using multiple images of the children’s bodies left him “extremely worried.” Unwilling to let it go, Boyle amended his Wikipedia signature to “Speaker for the Dead.” The current entry uses none of the photos.

Other controversial photos he added include a 1910 photo of a sexually-abused German boy that an editor quickly deleted saying it was “extreme.” Boyle added it a second time saying “nothing wrong with image.” The photo is not currently in use. He also added photos from the 1940s of examples of human cannibalism.

From Nazi women and Khadrs to Star Wars and torture: A look at Joshua Boyle’s vast Wikipedia edits

Yes. Just a peaceful humanitarian out to help people in a nation overrun with terrorists.

It was obvious early on and that this couple hadn't accidentally crossed the border.
 
Yes. Just a peaceful humanitarian out to help people in a nation overrun with terrorists.

It was obvious early on and that this couple hadn't accidentally crossed the border.

The family's refusal to travel to the United States led some former U.S. officials to speculate about the couple's motives in journeying to Afghanistan five years earlier and suggest that they may be trying to avoid tough questions from U.S. intelligence officials. Other U.S. officials played down that explanation.

"The administration made very clear that if they wanted to come back to the United States there would be no problems," said a U.S. official who is familiar with the case and was speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss dealings with the family.

snip

Boyle's associations with the family led some U.S. intelligence officials to speculate that the visit to Afghanistan may have been part of a larger effort to link up with Taliban-affiliated militants.

"I can't say that [he was ever al-Qaeda]," said one former U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. "He was never a fighter on the battlefield. But my belief is that he clearly was interested in getting into it."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.33bde4a5a241
 
On the day in October of 2017, when Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman and their children were flown back to Canada after five years in captivity in Afghanistan, Boyle was high-handed and entitled, bossing around and “directing” Global Affairs Canada employees he had just met moments before.

If Unger and her colleague tried to speak to Coleman — even once when they weren’t, but were conversing in the general vicinity of where she was sitting — Boyle would say, “That’s long enough” and motion for Unger to go back to her seat.

On the flight, Unger said, Boyle made it clear that Coleman and Unger were to look after the children.

At one point, after the meal service, he had a lengthy conversation with someone else on the plane, and when he returned, he told Unger, “’I’m going to sit over there (in a row ahead of the rest of the family) if you can sit over there and help Caitlan.’”

His tone made it obvious “it was not to be disputed. It was a tone that told me I was going to take care of the children.”

Christie Blatchford: On his flight to freedom Joshua Boyle was rude and entitled, assault trial hears
 
I guess it all begs the question, 'why did Ms. Unger allow Boyle to speak to her in that manner?'.

This dude is lucky he didn't run into ME.

Ms. Unger is an employee of the government department that was assisting NOT a babysitter.
 
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