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'Taliban kidnapped reporter'
07/03/2007 11:32 - (SA)
Kandahar - The Taliban claimed on Wednesday it kidnapped an Italian journalist, three days after an Italian newspaper lost touch with a veteran correspondent in southern Afghanistan.
A Taliban spokesperson claimed the militia captured a man who introduced himself as a Briton who worked for Italian daily La Repubblica - the same paper that raised the alarm about its reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo.
"The man we arrested is an Italian and he told us he worked for the Rome-based La Repubblica newspaper," Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a man who claims to speak for the Taliban, told The Associated Press by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location.
Asked to identify the Italian, Ahmadi sent a text message with the name "Danikel."
In Italy, the paper said it had not heard from Mastrogiacomo since Sunday. The reporter had been on assignment in Kandahar, the Taliban's former stronghold in southern Afghanistan, editor-in-chief Ezio Mauro said according to La Repubblica's website.
Foreign minister Massimo D'Alema said on Italy's Tg1 television news on Tuesday that officials did not believe Mastrogiacomo was "in the hands of a bunch of stragglers, but was effectively captured by the Taliban's military structure".
The ministry and the Italian embassy in Kabul were trying to find the reporter.
- AP
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