The Italian government has decided to give the Taliban a smooch on the butt.
nytimes.com/2007/03/21/world … ly.html?hp
[quote]An Italian journalist who was held hostage for 15 days by the Taliban in lawless southern Afghanistan was ransomed for five Taliban prisoners, the Italian government and Afghan officials confirmed Wednesday.
It appears to be the first time prisoners have been openly exchanged for a hostage in the wars that the United States and its allies are fighting there and in Iraq, and the move drew immediate criticism from Washington and London, and from other European capitals…
The exchange sent “the wrong signal to prospective hostage takers,” a spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office told Reuters.
On a visit to Kabul on Wednesday, the Dutch foreign minister, Maxime Verhagen, told reporters: “When we create a situation where you can buy the freedom of Taliban fighters when you catch a journalist, then in the short term there will be no journalists anymore…
Mr. Mastrogiacomo was abducted as he was driving with an interpreter and a driver to an interview with a Taliban commander near Lashkhar Gah, in southern Afghanistan, he wrote in La Repubblica on Tuesday, the day he returned to Rome.
Dragged from place to place, nearly always in chains, he was forced to watch a Taliban soldier decapitate his driver, then wipe the blade clean on the headless body…[/quote]