According to the BBC and consolidated international press reports on a National Union of Journalists Photographers’ blog, Torsello made a telephone call on 12 October 2006 to the director of the hospital in Lashkar Gah confirming that he had been kidnapped and did not know where he was being held.
"[7] However, a later report quotes a Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, telling the Afghan news agency Pajhwok that the kidnappers should "free their hostage because it is not fair to hit at Italy by killing an innocent journalist."
To confuse the position, the captors are reported to have contacted Emergency and asked, in exchange for freeing Torsello, for the return to Afghanistan of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan citizen who converted to Christianity and who escaped to Italy after he was sentenced to death in March 2006.
Furthermore, the Italian press agency AGI on 20 October 2006, quoted Torsello as saying, under duress, "The kidnappers frequently tell me that I am a spy and that British troops bombed Musa Qala and Nawzad districts on my intelligence", but that the abductors, contrary to their previous remarks, distanced themselves from the Taliban and said they were just Muslims fighting foreign occupation in the war-battered country.
[14] The head of Emergency, Gino Strada, is quoted as saying that the Italian government entrusted US$2 million to Rahmatullah Hanefi, the Afghan director of their hospital in Helmand, to secure the release of Torsello.
[15] Italy's deputy foreign affairs minister, Ugo Intini, confirmed that the Afghan government released five Taliban prisoners to win the freedom of Mastrogiacomo.