Interpreter held by Taliban slain, Afghanistan says

Taliban insurgents have killed the kidnapped interpreter of an Italian journalist whose own release from captivity followed a controversial swap for Taliban prisoners, an Afghan government official said Sunday.

The death of Ajmal Naqshbandi, who also was a journalist, came on a day of heavy violence in Afghanistan that also saw the deaths of seven North Atlantic Treaty Organization soldiers in roadside bombings in the south.

The government official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media, confirmed Naqshbandi’s slaying hours after a purported Taliban spokesman telephoned news agencies in Kabul, the capital, to say that the journalist had been beheaded.

Naqshbandi was working with Italian reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo in the troubled southern province of Helmand, where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, when the two men and their driver were kidnapped March 5.

The driver was beheaded soon afterward. Mastrogiacomo was released March 19 after Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed to free five Taliban prisoners, including at least two senior members of the fundamentalist Islamic movement.

The swap provoked a firestorm of national and international protest from critics who said the deal would encourage more abductions.

Within the last two weeks, at least 13 Afghans and two French aid workers have been kidnapped. Taliban rebels have demanded further releases of their jailed associates in exchange for some of the hostages.

Naqshbandi’s captors had offered a similar swap for him, but Karzai on Friday ruled out any more deals.

“When we demanded the exchange for the Italian journalist, the government released the prisoners, but for the Afghan journalist, the government did not care,” Shahabuddin Atal, a purported Taliban spokesman, told the Associated Press. Atal said that his group beheaded Naqshbandi in the Garmsir district of Helmand province Sunday afternoon.

Karzai said he agreed to a swap for Mastrogiacomo out of gratitude for Italy’s commitment of 1,800 troops in Afghanistan and because Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi had called him “several times and asked for cooperation.”

News of Naqshbandi’s slaying came as a heavy blow to colleagues and some Afghan officials who had thought some kind of a deal to secure his release might be possible. Last week, journalists rallied in Kabul to press the government to work harder to win their colleague’s freedom.

In Rome, where a huge photograph of Naqshbandi has been hanging from the facade of City Hall as a way to press for his release, Mastrogiacomo said he was devastated by the news of his colleague’s death.

“This homicide was horrible, gratuitous and cowardly,” Mastrogiacomo said in a statement. “Ajmal Naqshbandi was a journalist, like me, like so many who practice our craft circulating through the world.”

The blame for the killing rests squarely with the Taliban, “who have shown their true face to the world,” he said. “They are simple murderers.”

Prodi also condemned the killing of the Afghan journalist, labeling it “an absurd crime.”

Elsewhere in southern Afghanistan, six Canadian soldiers serving with NATO forces were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle outside the city of Kandahar, the Canadian Defense Ministry said on its website. Two others were injured.

A seventh soldier with the alliance was killed in a similar incident, said a spokesman for the international security forces in Afghanistan.

NATO-led troops have beefed up their operations in the south in recent weeks as a preemptive strike against an expected escalation of fighting by Taliban insurgents after the spring thaw.

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henry.chu@latimes.com

Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Rome contributed to this report.