"We consider the US-British coalition responsible for the safety of our secretary general and we demand that he be released immediately," the PLF said in a statement received here.

Abu Abbas, who masterminded the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985, was captured in Baghdad on Monday by coalition special forces supported by the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division.

He was sentenced in absentia in Italy to five life terms for his role in the Achille Lauro hijacking, in which an elderly, wheelchair-bound American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, was murdered and thrown into the Mediterranean.

The fugitive PLF leader was living in Iraq under the protection of now toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Earlier Wednesday, senior Palestinian official Saeb Erakat also called for his release, saying the 1995 interim agreement between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel prevented PLO members from being arrested or tried for acts committed before September 1993, when the first Palestinian autonomy accords were signed.

SPACE.WIRE