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Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov

Conditions also varied based on the guards on duty, Boyle said, adding that one would allow the family to eat mangoes while another could withold soap from the group for months at a time.

“We developed a sad joke with each other, that if we said ‘No, no, I think this change will be good because X’ it would invariably turn out to be bad, and when we said ‘No, no, this is bad news because X’ we’d be proven wrong again,” he said.

This certainly proved true on Oct. 11 when commandos stormed the area where the family was being held.

The rescuers were acting on intelligence from the United States indicating the group had been moved to Pakistan.

When it became clear that there were bullets ripping into the car we assumed this to be very bad ... but by the grace of God, no, it turns out it was the best thing to happen to us in five years

Boyle provided few details of the rescue other than to say it involved gunfire surrounding a car in which the group was travelling.

He said the rescue was the most dramatic example yet of the pattern of reversed expectations.

“When it became clear that there were bullets ripping into the car we assumed this to be very bad … but by the grace of God, no, it turns out it was the best thing to happen to us in five years,” he said.

The release came nearly five years to the day since Boyle and Coleman lost touch with their families while travelling in a mountainous region near the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Coleman Family

The couple had set off in the summer 2012 for a journey that took them to Russia, the central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and eventually to to Afghanistan.

Boyle said the couple was helping ordinary villagers in a Taliban-controlled area when they were seized.