ABCNews.com's The Blotter has an update on their exclusive story of the recent Taliban "graduation ceremony":
The Taliban military commander [Mansoor Dadullah] who led the "graduation ceremony" for 300 suicide bombers was one of five men released from an Afghanistan prison earlier this year in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist.
[...]
Journalist Daniel Mastrogiacomo was kidnapped along with his interpreter and driver by Taliban fighters in early March.
A hostage trade was negotiated, in part by an Italian-run hospital organization, for his release in exchange for the release of five senior Taliban commanders that were in the custody of the Afghan federal government.
As Noel Sheppard noted, this story has gotten short shrift from the rest of the mainstream media.
Meanwhile, there continues to be plenty of coverage of the unfortunate deaths of seven children in Afghanistan during a US-led airstrike aimed at killing al-Qaeda operatives.
