FEARS are growing for the future of a Teesside-based asylum seeker threatened with deportation.

It is thought that iAhmed Ali Shaheen, 28, who has been living in Middlesbrough for the past eight months, is being held at the Harmondsworth Detention Centre near Heathrow Airport.

The Home Office is planning to send Mr Shaheen, who is Kurdish-Syrian, back to Syria.

Campaigners are trying to stop the deportation and have produced an arrest warrant issued by intelligence services in Syria, which they say proves that Mr Shaheen's life would be in danger if he returned.

The Home Office has so far refused to look at a copy of the arrest warrant, telling campaigners in Teesside that they only consider original documents as evidence.

Mr Shaheen fled his homeland after members of his family were arrested by police and held without charge in March last year.

The arrests followed a clash between Arab and Kurdish fans at a football match in the town of Qamishli earlier in the month.

Security forces reportedly fired into the crowds, killing a number of people and more than 2,000 people, mostly Kurds, were thought to have been arrested.

Mr Shaheen went into hiding after the arrests of his family and a warrant for his arrest was issued by Syrian intelligence services in November. Without any means of contacting his family, Mr Shaheen does not know if they have been released.

Pete Widinski, of the North-East Coalition for Asylum Rights, said: "There is a very clear question mark over the safety of this man.

"Yet the Home Office can't even be bothered to look at the document to see if it is genuine.

"I have spoken to a lot of Kurdish people who are themselves very cynical about other Kurds coming over here, but they all have said to me that this man would be in danger if sent back.

"It makes you think they're not interested in the truth, just in sending people back."

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "We do not comment on individual cases."