* JULY 2001: Alex Kachepa abandons them with debts and goes back to Malawi to be with another woman Mrs Kachepa is warned not to return * DECEMBER 2002: The family claims asylum * FEBRUARY 2003: Asylum is refused * JUNE 2004: First appeal hearing turned down. “Today I am as worried for Malawi as I was for Niger earlier this year,” Mr Egeland said yesterday. The fight to stay * JANUARY 2001: Verah Kachepa and her four children arrive in Britain to join her husband. Jan Egeland, the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, said Malawi is “perhaps the most worrying country crisis in the world today”.

Shortly before leaving yesterday, Mrs Kachepa gave an insight into her fears. “They will be waiting for me there and I will be alone.” * The United Nations official who warned of impending disaster in Niger fears Malawi will also face a severe food shortage that will affect the 4.5 million people living in the country. So seldom does anyone talk to anyone else that the affectionate exchange of Klinghoffer with his wife registered as astonishingly moving.It was an experiment, and it didn’t come off. Another factor is mounting fear over security, with second-homeowners less likely to travel abroad because of terrorism, the report said.The changing structure of the family will also play its role in boosting the second home market to £53bn – a figure that will be shared among the 405,000 owners expected to own a property in the UK within the next decade. But Mr McNulty ruled their circumstances had not changed and their deportation order should stay in place.

Yesterday the older children, Natasha and Alex, said they hoped to return – either through her marriage or with a work permit gained through promised employment Meanwhile, the family faces an uncertain and risky future. Helen Bamber, founder of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, backed their case, insisting the family would be irreparably damaged if they were sent back to Malawi. Attempts to send them to Malawi last month were aborted due to an administrative fiasco with their tickets. Human rights lawyers applied to the Home Office for discretionary leave for them remain in the UK, insisting the family would suffer if they were returned to Malawi. But, despite becoming a political football, in the words of some of their supporters, they were ordered to be deported.

We have tried every legal avenue possible but they are an easy target for the Government because they are a law-abiding family.” Before the general election their case hit the headlines when Labour’s South Dorset MP Jim Knight attacked the Conservative candidate Ed Matts for doctoring a photo of the family in his campaign literature. Their priest Father Philip Dyson, of St Augustine’s Catholic Church, said yesterday: “It is a very sad day. The polite, hardworking family became popular members of the local community. A regular at the local church, Mrs Kachepa took up jobs in a charity shop and pregnancy care centre. Having been warned never to return to her homeland, Mrs Kachepa feared her young family would be targeted and treated as an embarrassment to her husband’s powerful new lover So she sought asylum.

But he abandoned them with debts six months later and returned to Malawi to be with the niece of the former president, Hastings Kamuzu Banda. We love it here.” Mr Sanderson, 20, said: “I don’t know if I’m ever going to see her again. I’m gutted she is leaving.” Two female immigration officers led the family away as half a dozen police officers watched the emotional crowd and removed a man who sat in protest in front of the vehicle. The family first arrived in Britain legally in 2000 with Mrs Kachepa’s pharmacist husband, Alex.