Taliban kidnap Italian reporter accused of spying
Source: Reuters
(Adds details from La Repubblica)
KABUL, March 6 (Reuters) - The Taliban said on Tuesday they had captured an Italian journalist who they said was spying for British troops in southern Afghanistan, along with two Afghan colleagues.
Guerrilla spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf said the reporter worked for La Repubblica, which in Rome said it had lost contact with reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo, 52, in Kandahar province since Sunday.
Yousuf, speaking by satellite phone from an undisclosed location, said the reporter had confessed to spying after being picked up in neighbouring Helmand province on Monday.
"He was pretending to be a journalist, but when we investigated we found he's working for the British troops," Yousuf said. "We're interrogating him and the other two."
La Repubblica later released Mastrogiacomo's resume to show he had been working as a journalist for 27 years, specialising largely in the Middle East and Central Asia since 2002.
Born in Karachi where his father worked at the time as an engineer for an Italian company, Mastrogiacomo reported from Baghdad, Tehran and Jerusalem among other places in recent years, the paper said. He holds both Italian and Swiss passports, but is neither a British nor a Pakistani citizen, it said.
The Taliban had originally said they had captured a British journalist.
NATO and Afghan forces on Tuesday launched their biggest offensive yet against the Taliban and drug lords in Helmand, one of the country's most dangerous areas.
Italian journalist Gabriele Torsello was kidnapped in Helmand in October and held for three weeks. And a crew working for al Jazeera television -- three Afghans and a Briton -- were held overnight last month while travelling from neighbouring Kandahar to Helmand.
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