BOSTON -- The employer and family of kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll were pleading for her release Wednesday morning.

The group that has taken Carroll are threatening to kill her this week if the U.S. does not do what they want and they released videotape of the captured reported Tuesday.

NewsCenter 5's Gail Huff reported that Carroll was kidnapped Jan. 7 and her translator was killed when the car they were in was ambushed on the way to a story in Baghdad. Eleven days passed before anyone heard from her until the al-Jazeera television network aired a 20-second videotape of her. She was speaking, but there was no sound on the tape.

TV producers said the tape was delivered with a message. It gave the U.S. 72 hours to free female prisoners in Iraq. It threatens that Carroll will be killed if that doesn't happen. No militant group's name was attached to it.

"I think this has all the fingerprints of al-Qaida. They will probably carry out the threat and it would be just a horrendous act," terrorism expert Dr. Edith Flynn said.

Tuesday night, Carroll's editor at the Christian Science Monitor released a statement.

"Jill's colleagues at the Christian Science Monitor and journalists around the world appeal to her captors to release her immediately and without harm ... She is a professional journalist whose only goal has been to report truthfully about Iraq and to promote understanding ... Jill is in our prayers," said editor Richard C. Bergenheim.

Carroll's family also released a statement saying, "Jill is an innocent journalist and we respectfully ask you please show her mercy and allow her to return home to her mother, sister and family. Jill is a kind person whose love for Iraq and the Iraqi people are evident in her articles." It was signed Jim, Mary Beth and Katie Carroll.

Jill Carroll was a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and earned a journalism degree there. She also worked at the student newspaper. Carroll worked for the Wall Street Journal, then was laid off and moved to Iraq to in 2003 and has been filing reports from there ever since.