(1) Here's a story that needs some investigative time put into it, if anyone's interested. Has everything: Osama bin Laden, GITMO, Mennonites, "pacifism," the Taliban, disaster tourism, US-Pakistan relations, family dynamics, sexual assault charges, & possible Stockholm Syndrome. 
(2) When Canadian Joshua Boyle and his American (second) wife Caitlin Coleman & 3 children were freed from their Taliban-linked captors and returned to Canada in October 2017, my spidey senses about him were activated.
(3) Caitlin Coleman's parents were ofc relieved beyond belief that the 5 were free, safe and able to start rebuilding their lives in North America BUT they expressed anger that Joshua Boyle had taken a pregnant Caitlin into Afghanistan in the first place.
(4) Obv Caitlin Coleman agreed to enter Afghanistan, for whatever reason, but I tend to agree with her parents that this was a bad decision. The "reason" given for the couple's unorthodox travel plans was that "bureaucracy" meant the newlyweds couldn't live together in CAN or USA
(5) While their residency status was progressed over the usual period of time. The two had met online as teenagers, he had married and divorced, then Boyle and Coleman married in 2011. I'd like to know why they couldn't live together. Was it his bin Laden connections?
(6) You see, Joshua Boyle had previously been married to Zaynab Khadr, a woman of Egyptian heritage who had been born in Canada while her parents were living there.
(7) Zaynab Khadr's father, Ahmed Khadr, was an Egyptian citizen who lived in Canada before working in Afghanistan, beginning in the 1980s. There he had ties to a number of militant and Mujahideen leaders in Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden, founder of al-Qaeda.
(8) Ahmed Khadr was accused by Canada & the US of being a senior associate & financier of al-Qaeda. Of his 7 children, Zaynab and her brothers Abdullah and Omar have been in the news over the years, shall we say.
(9) Abdullah Khadr was arrested in Canada in 2005 at the age of 24 & held for five years while an extradition request from US was reviewed. A Canadian court ordered him released in 2010.
(10) Omar Khadr was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 at the age of 16 & held in GITMO from 2002 to 2012. US forces captured him & alleged he had killed Army Sergeant Christopher Speer, among other offenses. Omar Khadr is the guy who won US$8 million from the Canadian govt in 2017.
(11) It was media coverage of the case of Omar Khadr that brought Joshua Boyle into the circle of Zaynab Khadr, who he married in 2009. Presumably, the couple divorced before he married Caitlin Coleman in 2011 but I haven't found confirmation of that yet.
(12) Most of the MSM coverage of this whole saga portrays Boyle and Coleman as "harmless hippies," travelling the world doing "humanitarian work," & implies that since they went through a 5 year ordeal, asking questions about their b/g, beliefs & motivations is in poor taste.
(13) Now that Boyle has been charged with some very serious offenses alleged to have occurred AFTER he was freed and returned to Canada, I can't help viewing his wife Caitlin in a rather different light to the way I view him. Learning about his first marriage only increased that.
(14) Caitlin Coleman's statement in response to the recent charges saddens me, but at least I can take some comfort in the fact that if she is the victim of the offending, it has now stopped, since he is in custody awaiting trial. 
(15) The human brain can only take so much cognitive dissonance before it acts to defend itself by picking one of the competing narratives and maintaining a degree of denial for the time it takes to get through a situation.
(16) If she is the victim, then like most victims of domestic abuse, she will have grappled with the cognitive dissonance of knowing the abuse is wrong & needing it to stop AND feeling compassion, sympathy, and a desire to forgive. This is normal.
(17) One day in the future, a lot of my questions about Joshua Boyle will be answered. For now, I can only speculate what the various bits of publicly known information about him mean.
(18) His father is a Canadian federal tax judge. He attended a Mennonite school, a sect known for it's "pacifist" beliefs. He was observed taking work breaks at scheduled Islamic prayer times, around the time he married Zaynab Khadr, who is linked to al Qaeda.
(19) Joshua Boyle owes his own & his families' lives to the US intelligence agents who reported their location to the Pakistan military, who risked their lives to rescue them. Yet he spurned a ride home on a US military plane, taking a commercial flight to Canada.
(20) Boyle claimed that he refused the US military flight home because he feared being arrested in relation to his past. I don't think many of us buy that excuse. I think he thinks "American imperialism" causes terrorists to attack.
(21) Obviously Boyle is entitled to due process. And his victim(s) are entitled to privacy. But we will be watching the Canadian government closely while this case is resolved. I have compassion for Caitlin Coleman & (obviously) the children.
(22) The monumental level of carnage caused by Jihadism-Marxism over the last century or so has caused untold suffering & death, & we are all invested in fighting it whether we want to or not. Left wing politicians have blood on their hands.
(23) Left wing politicians in Canada, USA, Europe & the Middle East have probably contributed to the carnage that has been done by members of the Khadr family & maybe also by Joshua Boyle.
(24) Both Boyle and Coleman were highly irresponsible for choosing to have children while in captivity (Boyle said in an interview that they did it because they had always wanted a large family & they didn't want the opportunity to pass them by).
(25) Call me old fashioned but I oppose anyone choosing to have children when you lack the means to provide for their health, safety and welfare. One of the children, a daughter, died through lack of health care in captivity. Another was killed by the captors before birth.
(26) The three surviving children are said to be healthy and doing well. I hope that is the case. My heart goes out to the couple's parents & other family members. My gratitude goes out to every serviceman or woman or civilian who helped get them all to safety.
(27) So many hostages have been killed over the years. And military personnel who died trying to rescue them. May they all rest in peace.
(28) We are privileged to live in lands of the free, because of the brave. The Boyle-Coleman story is tragic and there are many as yet unanswered questions. I think we're getting closer to having them answered, though.
END
END
