A refugee studying at Oxford University has begged the Government not to send him back to Afghanistan - where he says he may well be killed.

Undergraduates demonstrate in St Giles last night to support fellow student Azim Ansari

St John's College student Azim Ansari, 18, faces deportation before Christmas because the Home Office has refused to grant him further exceptional leave to stay in the country.

Yesterday (Nov 23) about 100 students held a candlelit vigil in St Giles, outside the college where Azim is a first-year engineering undergraduate.

Azim and his brother Wali, 28, fled Afghanistan in 2001 to escape the Taliban. After being smuggled into this country in the back of a lorry, they successfully claimed asylum.

In July 2002 they were granted one year's exceptional leave to remain, but last year Azim won a place at Oxford.

The Home Office has refused to grant a further extension saying it is now safe for young Afghan men to return home.

The brothers will learn their fate at a deportation hearing on December 22.

Azim told the Oxford Mail: "Afghanistan is not a safe place - I fear for my life if I go back and if people know I have come from a foreign country I will be in even more danger.

"I want to stay to finish my education because I will be more use to people here or in Afghanistan then.

"The Home Office wants to send Afghans back because they want people to think they have been successful in the war.

"I honestly don't know what would happen to me, but I have built a home here and tried so much to fit in. If we go back, we go back to uncertainty."

The brothers, who are members of the minority Ismaili Shia group in Afghanistan, have not heard from their parents, four brothers or two sisters since they fled the country.

They claim they suffered persecution, arrest and torture because of their ethnicity and religion, and fear they will be murdered if they are sent back.

In three years, Azim has studied English, maths and physics and got the necessary grades to win a place at Oxford - while his brother works to pay for his education.

Azim added: "I am an ethnic Hazara of the Ismaili Shia religion. This makes me a minority within a minority in Afghanistan.

"In 1998 there was a massacre of 10,000 Hazaras in a city not far from my town of Polekhomri. In 2001 the danger was getting worse and my father wanted the whole family to leave our area, but he didn't want all his eggs in one basket because if we were caught we would all be killed.

"One night we were told we had two minutes to say goodbye to our mother.

"My father always wanted us to be educated so this is a way of getting something positive out of what is a terribly sad situation. I hope to see my family again but I don't know if I will.

"When I opened my grades and realised I had got into Oxford I had two feelings - I was so happy, but I could not react like my friends who were jumping in the air because I didn't know if I really would be able to go.

"The Home Office had just told us our application to stay here had failed."

The Home Office told the Oxford Mail it would not comment on individual cases.

John Blake, president of the Oxford University Student's Union, said: "Afghanistan is a really dangerous place and if the Home Office is saying it is not, it is not paying a great deal of attention - it's about time they listened to real people."