Posted on 03/19/2007 1:50:07 PM PDT by Ben Mugged
An Italian journalist held for two weeks in Afghanistan said after his release Monday that he saw his captors cut off the head of one of the two Afghans kidnapped with him and thought he would be next to die.
In an interview with RAI Tg3 News, Daniele Mastrogiacomo described a harrowing experience. "I saw him be decapitated," he said.
He said the kidnappers threw the Afghan to his knees and suffocated him in the sand as they cut his head off.
"Then they wiped the knife on his clothes. I was shaking. Obviously I thought 'it's my turn now,'" Mastrogiacomo said.
The fate of the other Afghan who had been accompanying the journalist was not immediately known.
In an earlier audio posted on the Web site of his newspaper, La Repubblica, Mastrogiacomo said he slept in 15 different prisons that were "as small as sheep pens." His hands and feet were chained, and he was made to walk for miles in the desert, he said.
Mastrogiacomo said knowledge of the support of his colleagues and countrymen gave him strength.
"I knew that Italy was supporting me and that was the only comfort in the most desperate moments, when I feared I was going to be killed at anytime soon," he said. "This is the most beautiful moment of my life."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Fabrizio Quattrocchi set the standard for courage in the face of evil....we must do the same, the West must wake up and confront this with all our weapons, metaphysical and actual!
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