Image copyright AP 
 
 Family members of an American woman and Canadian man who went missing in Afghanistan in 2012 have released videos showing the couple captive. 
 
 Caitlan Coleman, sat next to Joshua Boyle, appeals to "my president, Barack Obama" for help. 
 
 The videos were emailed to Ms Coleman's family by an Afghan man months after she and Mr Boyle went missing. 
 
 The families of the captive couple said they decided to make the videos public because of Bowe Bergdahl's release. 
 
 They said their were disappointed the two were not freed as part of a prisoner swap deal that led to US soldier, Sgt Bergdahl, walking free at the weekend. 
 
 "It would be no more appropriate to have our government turn their backs on their citizens than to turn their backs on those who serve," Mr Boyle's father, Patrick Boyle, told Associated Press news agency. 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption The couple had previously travelled throughout Latin America 
 
 The man who sent the videos said he had Taliban ties but in 2012 the Taliban said it was not involved in their disappearance. 
 
 "We do not know about these two foreigners," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said at the time. 
 
 US officials investigating the couple's disappearance consider the videos authentic but said they offer few clues to their whereabouts or, indeed, whether they are still alive. 
 
 Ms Coleman and the younger Mr Boyle were wed in 2011. Their families said they were well-intentioned but naive adventure seekers. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Caitlan Coleman's family appealed for their daughter's return in 2012 
 
 The couple went missing in October 2012 during a months-long trip that included stops in Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Ms Coleman was pregnant and they were planning to return home before she gave birth. 
 
 The videos were emailed last summer by a Afghan man who told the families he had Taliban ties, but they have not heard from him for several months. 
 
 'No Guantanamo link' 
 
 In one recording, Ms Coleman appeals to the president. 
 
 "I would ask that my family and my government do everything that they can to bring my husband, child and I to safety and freedom," she says. Her child is not shown. 
 
 Mr Boyle was previously married to Zaynab Khadr, sister of the only Canadian to be held at Guantanamo Bay, Omar Khadr, who was transferred to Canadian custody in 2012. 
 
 But one US official told the Associated Press news agency investigators did not believe there was a link between the Khadrs and the kidnapping, calling it a "horrible coincidence". ||||| The daring plan to bring home an American woman and her family from Afghanistan, where they were held captive by a Taliban-affiliated group, appeared to hit a snag Thursday, with officials telling Fox News the woman's husband is refusing to board a plane out of the Middle East. 
 
 Caitlan Coleman, 32, was seven months pregnant when she and her husband, Josh Boyle, were abducted in Afghanistan in 2012 by the Haqqani network. The couple and their three children -- all of whom were born in captivity -- were freed Thursday in a "negotiated release," an official told Fox News. 
 
 The family has "been essentially living in a hole for 5 years," White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told reporters Thursday. 
 
 But Boyle is refusing to board an American military plane in Pakistan waiting to take them home, fearing he'll be arrested, a U.S. official said. Some officials say Roberts is fearful of perhaps being sent to Guantanamo Bay, based off his background. 
 
 Boyle was previously married to the sister of Omar Khadr, a Canadian man who spent 10 years at Guantanamo Bay after being captured in 2002 in a firefight at an Al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan. 
 
 The Canadian-born Khadr was 15 in 2002 when he tossed a grenade in a firefight that killed U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, a special forces medic. 
 
 TRUMP RAMPS UP PRESSURE ON PAKISTAN IN SPEECH 
 
 Other officials had discounted any link between that background and Boyle's capture by the Haqqani network, with one describing it to The Associated Press in 2014 as a "horrible coincidence." 
 
 The family was still in Pakistan Thursday afternoon and details of their departure are being worked out, a source told Fox News. 
 
 The Pakistani military confirmed the release and said the family was "being repatriated to the country of their origin." 
 
 “Please don’t become the next Jimmy Carter” - Caitlan Coleman in a 2016 plea to former U.S. President Barack Obama 
 
 The couple has told U.S. officials that they wanted to fly commercially to Canada, according to an official who spoke to The Associated Press. 
 
 The operation that set Coleman, Boyle and their children free remains somewhat mysterious. Pakistan's armed forces said in a statement an operation was undertaken by Pakistani forces based on actionable intelligence provided by U.S. authorities. U.S. intelligence agencies had reportedly been tracking the hostages and shared the location with Pakistani counterparts when the hostages shifted into Pakistani territory Wednesday. 
 
 But a source told Fox News that U.S. officials had been working on the release for a long time and had been placing pressure on the Pakistani government -- the Haqqani network has ties to Pakistan's intelligence services. The U.S., however, did not pay for the hostage release and no other hostages were released in a quid-pro-quo, sources said. 
 
 "Today they are free. This is a positive moment for our country's relationship with Pakistan," President Trump said in a statement Thursday. "The Pakistani government's cooperation is a sign that it is honoring America's wishes for it to do more to provide security in the region." 
 
 It is believed the family's captors are holding two other American hostages: Kevin King, a university professor who taught in Kabul and was captured in August 2016, and Paul Overby, a Massachusetts writer, who vanished in May 2014, the source said. 
 
 Trump appeared to hint at the news of Coleman's release during a speech in her home state of Pennsylvania a day earlier. 
 
 "Something happened today, where a country that totally disrespected us called with some very, very important news," Trump said Wednesday. "And one of my generals came in. They said, 'You know, I have to tell you, a year ago they would've never done that.' It was a great sign of respect. You'll probably be hearing about it over the next few days. But this is a country that did not respect us. This is a country that respects us now. The world is starting to respect us again, believe me." 
 
 Coleman and Boyle were last seen in a hostage video in December 2016 pleading for their governments to intervene. 
 
 The two vanished after setting off in the summer of 2012 for a journey that took them to Russia, the central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and then to Afghanistan. 
 
 Coleman's parents, Jim and Lyn Coleman, had previously last heard from their son-in-law on Oct. 8, 2012, from an Internet cafe in what Josh described as an "unsafe" part of Afghanistan. 
 
 The news of the release comes a month after President Trump announced a new strategy to deal with Afghanistan and Pakistan, saying the Taliban and other militant groups would no longer find safe haven in Pakistan. 
 
 Defense Secretary James Mattis and Gen. Joseph Dunford told Congress last week Pakistan would no longer be a sanctuary for terrorism. 
 
 "I applaud the innumerable lines of effort from across the U.S. government," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday in reaction to the family's release. 
 
 TRUMP APPROVES SENDING 4,000 MORE TROOPS TO AFGHANISTAN, SENIOR OFFICIAL SAYS 
 
 In the 2016 YouTube video, Coleman refers to "the Kafkaesque nightmare in which we find ourselves" and urges "governments on both sides" to reach a deal for their freedom. She then adds: "My children have seen their mother defiled." 
 
 Two young children appear in the video with them, and Coleman has told her family that she gave birth to two children in captivity. It was revealed Thursday that Coleman had a third child. 
 
 “Please don’t become the next Jimmy Carter,” Coleman said in the 2016 video, reading a prepared statement and making a plea to former President Barack Obama. “Just give the offenders something so they and you can save face so we can leave the region permanently.” 
 
 The Haqqani network has orchestrated a vast array of brutal attacks in Afghanistan in recent years, against both locals and the U.S. military, but unlike their Taliban associates, they are deemed to be more motivated by money than faith. 
 
 In that interview with Circa News in 2016, Jim Coleman issued a plea to top Taliban commanders to be "kind and merciful" and let the couple go. 
 
 Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin, Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
– Caitlan Coleman hailed from Stewartstown, Pa., a "land where bad things aren't supposed to happen." And yet a gripping Philadelphia magazine story describes how something bad did happen to the 26-year-old and her husband—Canadian activist Joshua Boyle, once married to the sister of Gitmo prisoner Omar Khadr—in 2012: They were kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan during a hike across Central Asia. The story by Holly Otterbein (an acquaintance of Coleman's from the same town) documents the disbelief the pair's loved ones felt when they first heard they were missing, the horror when they heard in 2013 the Taliban was holding them captive, and the panic when a series of proof-of-life videos of the two emerged, the third one in August. "We never think that someone we love will end up in a video released by the Taliban," Otterbein writes. But the American public at large is "grotesquely indifferent" to the fate of the couple and their two kids, since born in captivity. Officials believe the couple were taken hostage near Kabul by a Taliban affiliate known as the "Sopranos of the Afghanistan war" and are now being held in Pakistan. They've been in captivity for four years—just one year shy of the five years US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was held captive. The Taliban told the AP this summer the family was in good health, but in the August video, Coleman and Boyle said they and their kids would be executed unless Kabul officials stop killing Taliban prisoners. Otterbein notes their story has barely made a blip with the media, the US government has remained mostly tight-lipped, and online commentary about the disappeared pair can be cruel: "If we get them back, they would probably travel to Syria for their next little getaway," one poster noted. "Caitlan, like the war in Afghanistan and the fight against the Taliban, has been forgotten," Otterbein writes. (The chilling Philadelphia magazine story is worth the full read.)