While BBC reporter David Loyn jaunts about the Afghan wilderness with the mujahideen, extolling their toughness and skill, officials announced today that a kidnapped Afghan reporter had his head hacked off by Loyn’s traveling buddies.

KABUL (AFP) - Afghan officials have confirmed that the Taliban militia executed an Afghan reporter who was abducted with an Italian journalist last month, an Afghan news agency reported Sunday.

Intelligence services spokesman Saeed Ansari confirmed that the radical Islamist militia had executed Ajmal Naqshbandi on Sunday, the private Pajhwok news agency reported.

Ansari also said Rahmatullah Hanefi, the head of the Emergency non-governmental organisation that brokered Mastrogiacomo’s March 19 release, had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the abduction.

The Taliban earlier Sunday announced they had beheaded Naqshbandi after the government failed to respond to their demands for the release of jailed insurgents.

David Loyn probably doesn’t have to worry about meeting the same fate. With the adulatory reports he’s filing, his propaganda value is worth more to the Taliban than the joy they would take in slaughtering him.

UPDATE at 4/8/07 3:01:31 pm:

Arg. I keep getting caught by the BBC’s easy-to-miss dating system. The David Loyn article isn’t new; it’s from last October.

The point remains.