US evaluating Taliban video of captive couple in Afghanistan

KABUL — The State Department says it is evaluating a video released by the Afghan Taliban showing a Canadian man and his American wife warning that their Afghan captors will kill them and their children unless the Kabul government ends its executions of Taliban prisoners.

The video shows Canadian Joshua Boyle and American Caitlan Coleman, who were kidnapped in Afghanistan in 2012, calling on Canada and the United States to pressure the Afghan government into changing its policy on executing captured Taliban prisoners.

“I would tell you that the video is still being examined for its validity,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday, in response to a question at his daily briefing.

The footage, which was uploaded Tuesday on YouTube, came to public attention through the Site Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity online.

In the video, the scraggily bearded Boyle says the couple’s captors “are terrified of the thought of their own mortality approaching, and are saying that they will take reprisals on our family.”