By Saagar Enjeti, DCNF

Former Taliban hostage and Canadian citizen Joshua Boyle’s ex-wife’s father and brother had deep connections to al-Qaida and Usama Bin-Laden.

Boyle’s ex-wife Zaynab Khadr is the daughter of Ahmed Said Khadr and brother of Omar Khadr. Her father Ahmed was a veteran of the Afghan war in the late 1980s against the Soviet Union and is thought to have been a founding member of the al-Qaida terrorist group. His son, Omar was captured by U.S. forces during a firefight and spent 10 years in Guantanamo bay.

Omar was infamously granted a multi-million dollar settlement from the Canadian government for his detention despite admitting to killing a U.S. soldier in combat.

Boyle was married to Zaynab for approximately one year. He and his current wife Caitlin Coleman along with their three children were rescued by Pakistani Security Forces from the Taliban after nearly 5 years of captivity Wednesday.

Suicide bombers are “very, very brave” adding that she doesn’t “have the guts to do that yet,” Zaynab previously told a PBS Frontline documentary crew.

Of the 9/11 attackers she said, “I don’t think whoever did that really wanted to kill all these people, or to kill people who had nothing to do with anything. But he really wanted to hit the American government where it will hurt it,” adding: “I mean sometimes innocent people pay the price … The Iraqis who hated Saddam are being killed nowadays for I don’t know for what reason, although they hated Saddam and they probably had nothing against the states and they are still dying for it. Most of the time innocent people are paying the price.”

Boyle defended his ex-wife’s comments in the past to a Canadian reporter saying, “Are any of us honestly able to say that we have never uttered any phrases which, if they ran beside our name in the paper every month for five years, would paint an unflattering mental image in the public perception?”

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