The father of an American journalist being held hostage in Iraq pleaded for her release Friday, as the deadline set by the kidnappers expired.

"I want to speak directly to the men holding my daughter Jill because they may also be fathers like me," Jim Carroll said in the statement that aired Friday on the Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera.

"My daughter does not have the ability to free anyone. She is a reporter and an innocent person. Do not sacrifice an innocent soul ... as a father, I appeal to you to release my daughter for the betterment of all of us. And I ask the men holding my daughter to work with Jill to find a way to initiate a dialogue with me."

The kidnappers that nabbed Jill Carroll gave the United States until Friday to release all female Iraqi detainees, or else they would kill Carroll. They are a previously unknown group, calling themselves the "Revenge Brigade."

Carroll, a 28-year-old freelancer for the Christian Science Monitor, was grabbed Jan. 7 in a dangerous Baghdad neighbourhood near the office of a prominent Sunni Arab politician, Adnan al-Dulaimi, who she had been going to interview.

Gunmen ambushed her car and killed her translator shortly after she left the offices of al-Dulaimi, who failed to show up for the interview.

On Friday, Al-Dulaimi appealed for Carroll's release, and said he would work on getting the women detainees set free.

"We are against violence by any group, and we call the government and U.S. forces to stop raiding houses, arresting women," al-Dulaimi said in a statement. "I call upon the kidnappers to immediately release this reporter who came here to cover Iraq's news and defending our rights."

He said Carroll's abduction "makes me sad" because she was just 300 metres from his office when she was kidnapped.

There are eight Iraqi women in U.S. custody, and the Iraqi Justice Ministry has asked that six be released. There was no indication Friday if that had taken place.

Carroll was shown in a silent video that aired Tuesday on the Al-Jazeera network. A second part released by her captors aired two days later.

The Ann Arbor, Mich., native worked as a reporting assistant for The Wall Street Journal, before moving to Jordan and launching her freelance career in 2002. She speaks some Arabic, and was described by one of her editors as an aggressive reporter, but not a reckless one.

The Monitor's Washington bureau chief, David Cook, has urged Carroll's captors to contact the newspaper. He would not say if the paper would pay a ransom.

"I think our policy would be that we would welcome contact from the captors," he told NBC. "Either the family or the Monitor would be eager to talk to the captors."

More than 240 foreigners have been taken hostage in Iraq, and 39 have been killed since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.