A TERRIFIED Newport mum believes she will be killed if she is deported to Nigeria where she claims her husband was murdered. Cynthia Orgun, 31, also fears she will have to leave three of her children behind.

She fled Nigeria with three of her four children over two years ago after her husband was tortured to death.

After seeking asylum in the UK she applied to the Home Office for permanent residence and was sent to live in Dewstow Street, Newport. But her application and a subsequent appeal was rejected because she could not produce enough evidence to show her life was under threat. She says she now faces the prospect of being deported.

Mrs Orgun said her three-year-old twin daughters, Brenda and Brandy, would stay because of medical reasons - both are autistic while Brenda is also deaf - and Andrew, 7, would remain as he is at school here. She could not bring eldest daughter Courage, 13, out of Nigeria.

Wiping away tears as she spoke, Mrs Orgun said: "I now feel the same way I felt after my husband was murdered because I'm so scared of being sent back. When I go to sleep I wonder what will happen to me the next day.

"I don't think I would survive. It is not only the fear of being killed but the fear of leaving my children. They are my life - they are the only thing left for me."

Mrs Orgun, who lived in the civil war-torn Delta region of Nigeria with her husband Kingsley, 37, and four children, claims that in March 2003, after a long dispute over oilfields in the area, men posing as police officers took her partner away.

She said: "He was missing for three days before he was found by a stream tortured and killed.

"I was devastated - I had been with him since I was 15."

After her husband's death, Mrs Orgun claims she was also kidnapped while six months pregnant with the twins, taken to a warehouse, hung up by her wrists and questioned. She said Andrew was attacked with a machete.

"My husband was like a leader in our area and these people wanted the oilfields and mineral reserves on the land but my husband refused to hand them over," she said. "It was terrifying, I thought I was going to die. I think the trauma left the twins with health problems."

More than 100 people in the Newport area are now campaigning for her to stay.

"Everybody I've come across has wanted to help - it fills me with hope," said Mrs Orgun.

A spokesman for the Home Office said they were unable to comment on individual cases.