Joshua Boyle, the Canadian man who was recently rescued along with his family after five years in Taliban captivity, said he thought his captors were joking when they told him Donald Trump had become president of the United States.
“It didn’t enter my mind that he was being serious,” Boyle, who was rescued alongside his wife and three children in Pakistan last week, told the Toronto Star.
He also said he didn’t know Justin Trudeau was the Canadian prime minister until he was released, and he only learned Trump was the US president when he was forced to make a “proof-of-life” video.
Boyle said he and his family were trying to adjust to normal life back in Canada.
“Obviously it will be of incredible importance to my family that we are able to build a secure sanctuary for our three surviving children to call a home, to focus on edification and to try to regain some portion of the childhood that they have lost,” he said in a statement after arriving in Toronto on Friday.
Boyle and his American wife Caitlan Coleman were kidnapped while backpacking in Afghanistan in 2012 by the Taliban. They were rescued by Pakistani troops in the northwest of the country, near the Afghan border, last week.
