An Italian journalist who was held hostage by the Taliban in southern Afghanistan for two weeks said on Tuesday that he had been forced to witness the execution of his Afghan driver.
Daniele Mastrogiacomo, who was released on Monday, said in an account published by his daily La Repubblica that he watched while 25-year-old father of four Saied Agha was decapitated by the side of a river.
"I cannot help but watch, horrified. The driver has been kept in isolation in a different cell for two days. He is brought out. The (Taliban) commander issues his death sentence in the name of Islam. He says we are are spies and that we must die.
"I see Ajmal (Mastrogiacomo's interpreter) crying. I don't understand and ask him what they said and he replies, sobbing, 'They're going to kill us'.
"I rise to my knees and see the driver being held by four youths who push his face into the sand. They cut his throat and then continue, cutting off his entire head... They clean the knife on his tunic, tie the severed head to his body, take it to the side of the river and then let it go.
"I'm trembling and think, now it's my turn. I see myself with my throat cut, the blood spurting out from my arteries and drying on the sand, my body left to the river's currents".
Mastrogiacomo was abducted together with Agha and his Afghan interpreter Adjmal Nashkbandi near the southern city of Lashkar Gah on March 5.
He had been attempting to interview Taliban leaders in the surrounding province of Helmand, where NATO has just unleashed the biggest offensive since the 2001 war that toppled the Islamists.
Agha was executed last Thursday after a Taliban court said he was guilty of spying.
Mastrogiacomo, 52, was also initially accused of spying for the British and threatened with death.
He told the Rome-based La Repubblica that there were seven or eight occasions when he thought he would be executed and at one point he was viciously beaten with rubber tubes.
He said his 15-day ordeal had been a "real torture - psychological, physical, mental, religious, political, existential torture. It feels like the 15 days have left the mark of 15 years".
Mastrogiacomo said his captors were all young men in their 20s who were "very religious" and prayed constantly.
He said they wanted "Islam in Afghanistan" as a condition of peace and feared they would be prevented from practising their religion under a pro-West government.
"But they're also crazy, people who shoot at the English and Americans without covering their faces, waging battles with absolutely no fear of dying," he said.
Five Taliban militants, including the brother of top Taliban commander Mullah Dadulla, were freed in exchange for Mastrogiacomo's release.
Emergency, an Italian-based medical aid organisation which played a key part in the negotiations, denies that a ransom was also paid.
Mastrogiacomo will be flown to the Afghan capital of Kabul later on Tuesday and from there on to Rome.
But there was still no news of his interpreter.
Initially, Nashkbandi was believed to have been freed with Mastrogiacomo and the correspondent reported seeing him released from his prison chains. But the interpreter never showed up at an Emergency-run hospital in Lashkar Gah where Mastrogiacomo was taken by his captors.
Nashkbandi's family said on Tuesday that they had not heard from him and Mastrogiacomo said he feared he could have been recaptured by the Taliban.
A group of demonstrators gathered outside the Lashkar Gah hospital on Tuesday to protest against the Afghan government's handling of the case. They accused it of focusing exclusively on Mastrogiacomo and not doing enough to help the Afghan hostages.
Afghan news agency Pajhwok reported in the meantime that the driver's body had been found. It said his family had been informed and had gone to collect the body.
EMERGENCY MEDIATOR ARRESTED.
Meanwhile, an Emergency official who played a decisive role in mediating Mastrogiacomo's release was arrested by the Afghan secret services on Tuesday.
Rahmatullah Hanefi, head of personnel at the Lashkar Gah hospital, was taken away for questioning, according to PeaceReporter, a website which specialises in conflicts and is close to aid agencies in Afghanistan.
Emergency founder Gino Strada told PeaceReporter that Hanefi's arrest was "grotesque" and demanded his immediate release.
The Italian ambassador to Kabul, Ettore Sequi, subsequently said he had been assured by the Afghan authorities that Hanefi was being questioned as part of a judicial investigation into Mastrogiacomo's abduction.
"They have said it is a matter of procedure... and have guaranteed that he will soon be released," Sequi said.
Emergency, which runs three hospitals and 30 other facilities in Afghanistan, also helped last year in the release of Italian photo-journalist Gabriele Torsello after three weeks' captivity in Helmand.
Strada stressed recently that Emergency played a key humanitarian and social role in the country and that this, together with it neutral status, gave it contacts and channels that were usually denied official representatives in hostage negotiation processes.
Mastrogiacomo's abduction was also a political issue in Italy, fuelling demands from pacifists in Italian Premier Romano Prodi's governing coalition that Italy's troops be withdrawn from Afghanistan.
Italy has 1,900 troops serving in Afghanistan but critics say the conflict-torn nation has become too dangerous for peacekeepers.
Prodi, however, insists that Italy must fulfill its international obligations and remain in Afghanistan.
