Kidnappers have lifted their threat to kill a U.S. journalist abducted in the southern city of Nasiriyah along with his Iraqi translator, an aide to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said Saturday.

The kidnappers, calling themselves the Martyrs Brigade, threatened Thursday to kill Micah Garen of New York within 48 hours if U.S. troops did not leave Najaf, according to a video aired on the Arab-language television station Al-Jazeera.

Garen and his Iraqi translator, Amir Doushi, were walking through a market in Nasiriyah on Aug. 13 when two armed men in civilian clothes seized them, police said, citing witnesses.

Al-Sadr aide Sheik Awas al-Khafaji said Saturday he had spoken to mediators who said the death threat had been lifted and they were working out a way to have Garen released.

"We hope that he will be released today and our efforts would be fruitful," he said Saturday by telephone from Nasiriyah. "As for the Iraqi translator, we have received assurances that he is going to be released with the journalist."

It was not possible to independently verify the claim.

Garen appeared in another video aired Friday on Al-Jazeera saying his captors were treating him well. "I am an American journalist in Iraq and I've been asked to deliver a message," he said. "I am in captivity and being treated well."

The newsreader said that Garen also had called for an end to the killing in Najaf, where U.S. and Iraqi forces have been fighting a radical Shiite militia for two weeks, though that part of the audio was inaudible.

Garen was working on a story about the looting of archaeological sites in Iraq when he was abducted, said his fiancee, Marie-Helene Carleton.

Garen worked for Four Corners media, identified on its Web site as a "documentary organization working in still photography, video and print media."

He has taken photographs as a stringer for The Associated Press and had a story published in The New York Times. His photographs also have appeared in U.S. News & World Report.

Source: CD/Agencies