'In two hours’ time get ready.” The commander, as they call him, is beaming. He walks into the room of earth and straw where we have slept since Sunday night and announces: “You’re free, you’re flying away.” He makes the gesture of a plane taking off.

I’m stunned. I’m one step away from freedom. I get up, with the chains that have clasped my ankles for the past 15 days and I stare at the commander in amazement, with no strength left, divided between the fear of suffering another disappointment and the strong desire to be free.

I don’t believe anything any more, I’m suspicious of everything. He shakes my hands. He has a white smile surrounded by a thin black beard. “Sure?” I ask him. He laughs again and replies, “Sure.”

I jump for joy in fits and starts because of the chains that stop me moving more than four inches at a time. I have felt — they have made me feel — like a prisoner at Guantan-amo. The six guards burst into the room, they are happy, they smile, shake my hands, slap me on the shoulders. They ask my forgiveness and rush at the locks on the chains that bind me. The keys have been lost in the desert.

It hasn’t been a kidnapping but torture. Psychological and physical, mental, religious, political, existential. Fifteen days which have marked me like 15 years. Inside and out. I pray for the umpteenth time. I ask God if I will survive. I provoke the commander. I stop him and ask: “Let’s talk man to man. You condemned me in the desert, before having that poor man’s head cut off, and now you release me. Do you think I am a spy or a journalist? What do you really believe?” He looks at me fixedly, no longer smiling. “A journalist,” he replies.

“No problem,” he insists, “you’re free.” They put me in a car, an old Toy-ota Corolla. Two young men cram in beside me with their Kalashnikovs. I am released by a river. The commander, with his satellite phone (which gives him chief status), shouts orders. On the other side of the river I see dozens of people. I think they’re Afghan soldiers or police. I fear a shoot-out.

I’m taken by boat across the river. My chains are taken away — finally — and I jump onto the bank where the man from Emergency, the relief organisation, is waiting for me. I’m bewildered, happy but trembling, afraid of yet another let-down after so much. As we get into a car I’m still afraid. I look out at the desert we’re crossing; I can’t really breathe and need air and find myself opening and closing the window over and over.

The camels, the donkeys, the colours, the setting sun, the men praying to Mecca. I look to my right and my heart skips a beat. It is the place where I was captured. Tears wet my dust-covered face, my long beard. I cry. I cry at last.

They kidnapped me here, a mile from the centre of Lashkar Gah. I had decided to go to the south, to Kanda-har and then Lashkar Gah, because here the Taliban dominates and I wanted to see what that means in practice. As a reporter, I’ve always wanted to see with my own eyes, to listen, to take it in and then to tell the story. I’ve worked like this dozens and dozens of times in Iraq, Somalia, Palestine.

That day, my Afghan fixer tells me it is all set up; our interview with the Taliban military commander is set for 11am. With the driver we leave Las-khar Gah and a mile further on pick up a boy. He is wearing a traditional turban-style cloth that even covers his eyes. I greet him; he doesn’t reply. He shows us the way, a road of rocks and gravel that loses itself in the fields.

We drive another mile, cross some irrigation channels, then stop. From the hills three motorcycles appear. On them are three young men dressed like Taliban in black turbans and dark grey clothes. They are armed. They stop us. They glower at us.

They make me get out of the car and take everything: money, passport, documents, computer, watch, telephones. I’m bewildered and try to explain it to myself; I think it’s just a misunderstanding. We have an interview set up here, everything’s regular. They point the barrels of the guns at me, tie my hands and put a blindfold on my eyes.

I feel I’m going mad. I discover that I suffer terribly from claustrophobia, that I have to see light and have difficulty breathing. I manage to free myself and take off the blindfold. The butt of a Kalashnikov strikes my back and I fall to the ground. On my knees I lift my hands, I give up. A second blow from a Kalashnikov hits me on the head. The blood spurts out, soaking my blindfold.

I end up with the others in a house of mud and straw. The guards, a dozen of them, talk, offer us tea and tell us we are under arrest for “illegal entry into Taliban territory”. They have to verify who we are. If they discover we are spies they will kill us. If instead we are journalists as we have said from the start, we will be used for an exchange of prisoners. They are hostile and formal at the same time.

The next morning we leave at dawn after the first (6am) prayer, an intense moment that I am allowed to watch. I am and remain a kafir, an infidel. Water, food, the objects I touch belong only to me. None of my guards can touch them, it would be an impure act. We move further south; more deserts, more mountains.

They buy chains and bind our feet and hands. We share food and blankets. We are never short of anything, not even cigarettes. We stay two days in this hole at the bottom of the world.

Always shut up in a sheep pen, a brick for a pillow, the fleas devouring you, the scabs of dirt forming on your body. I try to keep my self-respect; I wash often but only with water.

I sleep a lot, trying desperately to escape the nightmare. But my mind is fixated: I think about everything in relentless detail, what I should do, what I should say, how I should behave. They take it in turns to come into our hole and question me. Ahjmal, my colleague and interpreter, says they are finding things out, that I must be very careful. I learn not to let myself go. I have only one aim: to demonstrate that I am not a spy.

We talk a lot about religion. They ask me how we behave in our society, how we make love, what the punishments are for those who kill, steal or commit adultery. It’s difficult to make them understand how different Italy is.

My first night of liberating sleep. They wake me suddenly. The driver has already returned to the sheep pen and is crying continuously. I look at him, a little lost. I don’t know what has happened. He whispers to me, “Tell them that you gave me $50 a day.” They take hold of me, tie my hands behind my back and make me go into another room. They are all there in a circle. One of the deputies questions me. He asks me about the money; I answer him. He asks me what was in my computer; I tell him everything clearly. He asks me how much money I had; I tell him what I can remember.

They point to the ground and make me lie down, then start to whip me with pieces of rubber tubes. Ten blows. They shout “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest). I scream “Basta” (enough). The man who is in front of me, and who indicates with his hand that they cut my throat, orders them to stop. Many of them laugh. My heart is beating crazily. I’m still alive, but it has all got much more serious than I had imagined.

I learn the rules the hard way. I have to be careful about everything I do or I risk offending their religious sensibilities. An Al-Qaeda man arrives from Pakistan. He scrutinises me with a stare full of hatred, but over the next three days is my most sensitive captor. When I cry in the middle of the desert, trembling because of the cold that hurts my hands and feet, he rubs them with tiger balm and talks to me about Islam, Allah, the fact that maybe God had decided I should meet them so I could understand the true nature of the Taliban.

I dream continuously. I dream of my mother, who tells me to come back. I dream of my father, who died last summer. I dream of my relatives, who on the other side of a river reach out to me with their arms and hands. I dream of my children, my wife, my brothers and sisters. I believe the situation can be resolved. I believe — I am convinced — the government will not abandon me. But hope is dwindling.

The days go by. I see sudden battles, ambushes that the group carries out. More than once I am dragged, always in chains, on the ground and covered by a mujaheddin who fires his Kalashnikov like a madman.

During breaks, these boys of 24 or 25 years of age ask me what I think of their jihad, but that in any case, even if I die, I will be able to see them again in paradise. They insist on paradise and one after another tell me that my only choice is to become a Muslim because only that way will I save my soul. I kneel five times a day and pray that God, my God, will save me.

We change house again. A boy who works as a journalist for the Taliban says we have to make a video to put pressure on the Afghan government. They make us crouch down in a Jeep, waiting for hours in the sun. Then we go to the bank of a river and the commander arrives. They all camou-flage their faces. They tie our hands behind our backs, blindfold us and make us kneel down.

I peek out and my blood runs cold. Our driver had been isolated in a different cell but now he is placed in the middle of us. The commander pronounces his death sentence, in the name of Islam. He says we are spies, that we must die. I see Ahjmal cry. I don’t understand and I ask him what they said. He answers, sobbing: “They’re killing us.” I straighten up on my knees and see the driver grabbed by four young men. They push his face into the sand, cut his throat, and then they go on and cut off his whole head. He doesn’t manage to make even the sound of a wheeze.

They clean the knife on his tunic, tie the severed head to the body, carry it to the edge of the river and let him go. I’m waiting, my legs shaking. I mumble something to the commander, ask him what’s happening. I feel someone grab me. I can see myself with my throat slit, the blood squirting from all the arteries, absorbed by the sand, the body entrusted to the river’s course. We are taken back to the Jeeps.

It’s the last day. I thought it was a normal day. Hopes that turn into disappointments. No, this time it’s true, they release me. The commander embraces me, false and sincere at the same time. I tell him he has won. Before letting me go, he whispers in my ear, in perfect English: “If God wills, Inshallah, we will see each other in paradise.” I turn, but he has already gone. His men fire their Kalashnikovs in celebration.

Daniele Mastrogiacomo was in Afghanistan reporting for La Repubblica

Italy condemned for doing deals with kidnappers, and it’s not the first time

The price paid for the release of Daniele Mastrogiacomo has sparked public condemnation of Italy by Britain and America, who accuse it of encouraging more kidnappings, writes John Follain.

To obtain the release the prime minister Romano Prodi pressured Afghan authorities into releasing five senior Taliban militants. The militants included the brother of Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban’s top operations commander.

The ransom deal marked the first time prisoners have been openly exchanged for a hostage in the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. Fearing the lives of soldiers, journalists and aid workers there will now be even more at risk, allies condemned Italy for negotiating. In Rome the centre-right opposition accused Prodi of caving in to terrorists.

However, Italian governments have negotiated with kidnappers and met their demands before. In early 2005 reports of a £3.1m ransom paid for the release in Iraq of the journalist Giuliana Sgrena incensed the Americans. In 2004 Italy paid a reported £2.6m for the freedom of two aid workers in Iraq, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta.

In Mastrogiacomo’s case, Italian officials said Rome had rejected repeated offers from British military forces in southern Afghanistan to carry out a raid to free him. Officials said the British forces kept track of his movements by monitoring satellite phone calls made by his captors.

During the negotiations, the Taliban beheaded Sayed Agha, Mastrogiacomo’s driver. His translator, Ajmal Naqshbandi, is missing. Far from bowing to international pressure, Italy defended its tactics. “I am not the slightest bit repentant for having saved [Mastrogiacomo],” foreign minister Massimo D’Alema said.

Ustad Yasir, described as a Taliban spokesman and among the released prisoners, said he was “grabbing two rifles to begin jihad again to hunt down invaders and fight nonbelievers”.

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