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Joshua Boyle says his wife did not wash enough after they returned from captivity in Afghanistan, and that his complaints about her poor hygiene triggered an emotional “fit.”

On Nov. 5, 2017, Boyle, Caitlan Coleman and their three children were supposed to meet his parents in downtown Ottawa, he told court Tuesday.

Coleman has testified that on that day, Boyle forced her into the shower, hit her across the face, and supervised as she took some of his trazadone, an anti-depressant.

Boyle told court a vastly different story.

He testified that on that day, he “advised Caitlan to bathe” before they left their hotel room to meet his parents.

“I don’t remember if I invoked the fact both my mother and father had complained about Caitlan’s hygiene,” Boyle told court. “Meeting in public was often embarrassing for them.”

Boyle said he had encouraged his wife to resume Canadian habits of hygiene. “But understandably, it took time,” he testified. “She had been living for five years in a cell in Afghanistan.”

He admitted that his suggestion may not have been tactful since Coleman was self-conscious about the issue. In any event, he said, it triggered one of Coleman’s emotional “fits.”

He has testified that such fits were a regular occurrence during their 11-year relationship.

Boyle said Coleman started to hyperventilate and to babble, but she eventually went to have a shower during which time he went on the internet to look up whether trazadone — a drug he had been prescribed for nightmares — was also indicated as a treatment for panic attacks.

Since trazadone was indicated for such a use, Boyle said, he brought his wife the recommended dosage: 150 milligrams.

Boyle told court he either handed his wife the pills — he couldn’t say how many pills were involved — as she showered or left them on the toilet tank. “I indicated to her, ‘It’s here,’ and I left,” he testified.

He flatly denied suggestions put to him by Crown attorney Jason Neubauer that he ordered Coleman to the shower, confined her in the bathroom, hit her in the face, and forced her to take the medication.

Boyle has been charged with assault and administering a noxious substance in connection with the alleged events. They are among the 19 criminal charges that he faces.

Boyle said he didn’t consider it a serious matter to offer his wife trazadone. His wife hadn’t yet obtained a prescription for Xanax, her usual anti-anxiety medication, and it seemed the only way he could help her deal with the panic attack, he said.

While they were hostages in Afghanistan, Boyle noted, there was no such thing as a prescription and his family had to manage with the drugs they could obtain. “I had been practicing medicine without a license for half a decade in Afghanistan,” he said in disputing Neubauer’s suggestion that his actions were serious and put his wife at risk.

Boyle said that when Coleman emerged from the bathroom, she was, for whatever reason, calmer.

“I still to this day do not know whether or not she took it,” he said.

Earlier, Boyle told court that his marriage to Zaynab Khadr was designed as “temporary.” Both he and Khadr, the eldest daughter of al-Qaeda insider Ahmed Khadr, entered the marriage with that understanding, Boyle told court.

“It was not an orthodox marriage with orthodox goals,” he said.

Coleman has testified that Boyle’s marriage to Khadr was a sham designed to improve her image in the media.

Boyle, 36, has pleaded not guilty to 19 charges, including assault, sexual assault, sexual assault with a weapon, forcible confinement, criminal harassment and public mischief.

Coleman has offered the lion’s share of evidence against Boyle, and the trial now amounts to a credibility contest between the two former hostages, who were held for five years in Afghanistan and Pakistan by extremists in the al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani network.

Coleman contends that Boyle was a cruel, controlling husband whose physical abuse began while they were in captivity and continued upon their return to Ottawa in October 2017. Boyle maintains that his mentally ill wife invented stories of his abuse.

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