(Great News! Latest Update) Hold a good thought, please...

Yew Tee. I like that.

I'd love to hear about it from Kash whenever he makes a statement.

 

The whole place is a madhouse but that really sounds like somebody's found a basis for negotiations.

 

Kash is back in Rome as of this morning. Sounds like Italian military intelligence may have had a hand in negotiating his release....

TORSELLO: BERLUSCONI TO POLLARI, ROLE OF SISMI DECISIVE
(AGI) - Rome, Nov. 3 - Today former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi called General Niccolo' Pollari and congratulated him on the release of Gabriele Torsello in Afghanistan. "Yet once more," said a note, "the role of SISMI (Italian military intelligence service) has proved to be decisive for the success of such delicate operations as the one today which allowed for the release of an Italian citizen. This success of our military service," continued Berlusconi, " is even more worthy of note if we think of the pressure and use for political ends that SISMI has been subjected to over the past few months." (AGI) -
031953 NOV 06
COPYRIGHTS 2002-2006 AGI S.p.A.

and


Photographer held captive in Afghanistan returns home to Italy

The Associated Press

A photographer kidnapped in Afghanistan last month returned home to Italy on Saturday, one day after his captors freed him and left him on the side of a road.

Relatives and officials, including Defense Minister Arturo Parisi, greeted Gabriele Torsello at Rome's Ciampino airport.

"I am well. Thank you, Italy," Torsello said moments after stepping off the plane, clad in traditional Afghan dress and sporting a long, full beard.

Torsello, 36, was kidnapped Oct. 12 while traveling by bus from Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, to neighboring Kandahar, said Ettore Francesco Sequi, Italy's ambassador to Afghanistan.

The photographer was scheduled to be questioned by prosecutors and anti-terrorism investigators in Rome before heading to his family's home in southern Italy, Italian TV and news agencies reported.

Torsello's kidnappers had asked for the withdrawal of Italy's 1,800 troops from Afghanistan, and for the return of Abdul Rahman, an Afghan who had faced the death penalty for converting to Christianity and was granted asylum in Italy.

Sequi said neither of the demands would be met, and said he didn't think ransom was paid for Torsello's freedom. He said pressure from local elders and the work of Afghan authorities helped win the photographer's release.

It was not clear what Torsello was doing in volatile southern Afghanistan but a Taliban spokesman told The Associated Press last month that Torsello had spent time with fighters in Helmand.


I'm sure we'll get better details once Kash has been debriefed.