A MACEDONIAN conscientious objector threatened with deportation is hoping a campaign in his adopted town of Redcar could save his family from being forced to return home.

Marjan and Lile Dimitrievski say that to return to their home would put them and their two young sons in great danger.

Today, a campaign backed by a local refugee support service and Redcar MP Vera Baird will be launched to try to persuade UK immigration authorities to let the family stay in this country.

The couple have been told they must return to their village, four miles from the border with Kosovo, because Macedonia is no longer considered to be a war zone.

But Marjan, 36, says he will be arrested and could face up to five years in jail as soon as he arrives because he refused to do his national service in the Macedonian army as he is against the concept of war.

The couple came to the North-East in May 2000 with their sons Sasha, now 11, and Miki, now eight.

Marjan says he thinks constantly about the terrors he left behind him.

"The army will come looking for me - they came seven times to look for me in the middle of the night and my mother had to lie and said she didn't know where I was," he said.

Lile, 35, who works as a volunteer at a refugee centre in Middlesbrough and is completing a translators' course, said: "Our village is very mixed and we worked with those people. We don't want to turn the gun on our friends and neighbours, and we wouldn't feel safe.

"There is no peace. We couldn't trust anyone because of the religious problems. Too many people have been killed and everything has changed."

The boys have settled in well at their schools and have picked up distinctive Redcar accents.

Pete Widlinski, of the North-East Coalition for Asylum Rights in the Tees Valley, said: "It would be criminal to send them back. There's still an enormous amount of problems in Macedonia.

"The area where the family comes from is very near the border and there's all sorts of military incursions and mafia gangs operating with impunity."