Former Taliban hostage arrested for sexual assault and other charges.

Joshua Boyle. ABC.

Former Canadian Taliban hostage Joshua Boyle, who was released in October, has been charged with 15 counts, including sexual assault. ABC News. In addition to the sexual assault charges, Boyle has been charged with assault, assault on a child and unlawful imprisonment. His wife, American Caitlin Boyle said that he was effected by his captivity. Boyle and his wife were captured in Afghanistan by the Taliban's Haqqini network and the couple had three children while under captivity. 

My Comment:

What a strange follow up to an already strange story. The original story was weird enough as it was back when I covered it originally. The Boyle family went to Afghanistan while Caitlin was 6 months pregnant and then were captured by the Taliban. They were stuck there until this year and were released under mysterious circumstances. Now the husband has been accused of some horrible crimes. 

Indeed, the entire story sent up some rather large red flags about the behavior of Joshua and Caitlin Boyle. I can't imagine traveling with a wife who was six months pregnant. Even worse, he took her to a war zone, which is just stupid. No matter what happened after that he had to expect that something bad would have happened right? 

There isn't much to say about the actual charges, as there isn't much information available. With Canada's fairly extreme victim protection laws there is very little info about what he actually did. What little info we have is pretty terrible. If they are true than we probably should have left him in captivity. Still, he does deserve the presumption of innocence even if he is accused of bad crimes. 

If he did do these terrible things you have to wonder if it wasn't due in part at least to his captivity. That obviously doesn't excuse what he did but it could help explain it. We don't have a whole lot of information of what happened in his captivity but you have to think that even being isolated in captivity for so many years could turn a person mean. 

On the other hand, Joshua Boyle was always kind of a strange person. Like I said before it is unthinkable to me to take a pregnant wife to a war zone for very strange reasons. I could very easily see him as the kind of person who would hurt a woman or a kid. We will have to wait until his day in court but whatever the outcome is I won't be surprised anymore. This is an already strange story and I can see it get even weirder.