Justin Trudeau has suggested that security and intelligence officials in Canada raised no red flags over his decision to meet Joshua Boyle and his family in December, less than two weeks before the former hostage was arrested on more than a dozen charges including sexual assault, forcible confinement and uttering a death threat.

During an interview with a Halifax radio station on Tuesday, the Canadian prime minister was asked whether he regretted the meeting. Trudeau pointed to the work his government had done to support Canadians caught in difficult situations abroad.

His office is often directly engaged in these cases, said Trudeau, resulting in him meeting with a number of people who have been freed after overseas ordeals. “So these kinds of things are something that I do, I always try to defer to meeting with more people rather than fewer people, in particular people for whom we’ve been working hard over the past years,” he said. “I think that’s something that’s important to do.”

Today was a wonderful experience for my family, and Ma'idah Grace Makepeace seemed truly enamoured. Incidentally, not our first meeting with @JustinTrudeau, that was '06 in Toronto over other common interests, haha. pic.twitter.com/Aj2eVGJoux — The Boyle Family (@BoylesVsWorld) December 19, 2017

The interviewer then asked whether the meeting had perhaps been the result of a lack of judgment or bad advice from his staff. Trudeau replied: “We make sure that we follow all the advice that our security professionals and intelligence agencies give us and that’s exactly what we did in this case.”

Boyle was rescued in late 2017 in Pakistan, along with his American wife, Caitlan Coleman, and their three young children, all of whom were born during the couple’s five years in captivity. The couple – who were more than six months pregnant at the time – were backpacking through Afghanistan when they were abducted.

Last week, after news broke of Boyle’s arrest on 15 charges, including eight counts of assault and two counts of sexual assault, questions began swirling over the family’s December meeting with Trudeau at the prime minister’s office on Parliament Hill.

Some columnists raised red flags over Boyle’s previous, brief marriage to Zaynab Khadr, whose father was a senior al-Qaida financier with links to Osama bin Laden, arguing the link should have been enough to discourage Trudeau from granting the meeting.

Justin Trudeau: ‘We make sure that we follow all the advice that our security professionals and intelligence agencies give us and that’s exactly what we did.’ Photograph: Adrian Wyld/AP

Others cited the many unanswered questions about why Boyle and Coleman were travelling in Afghanistan in the first place. “In various expositions, Boyle has claimed they unwittingly crossed into Afghanistan from Pakistan while backpacking through Central Asia, that they’d gone to Afghanistan as ‘pilgrims’ on a humanitarian mission to help civilians living in Taliban-control regions, and also that he’d hoped to get himself ‘embedded’ as a journalist with the Taliban. Take your pick,” noted one Toronto Star columnist.

Opposition politicians also took aim. “How can a politician be taken like this? Even in the opposition we had information that was setting off alarms,” Conservative MP Pierre Paul-Hus wrote on social media.

Police have not disclosed whether Boyle was under investigation at the time of his meeting with Trudeau. News of the encounter emerged after the family published photos on social media showing Trudeau holding the couple’s youngest child in mid-December. A government official told the Guardian that the meeting had taken place at the request of the Boyle family.

Boyle remains in detention awaiting a bail hearing. The incidents are alleged to have taken place following the family’s return to Canada. A publication ban prevents the alleged victims from being identified.

None of the allegations have been proven in court. Speaking to the Guardian last week, his lawyer stressed that Boyle is presumed innocent and has no criminal record.