Behind the wire are people fleeing terror. We send them back to face torture, jail or a life on the run

Paul's voice dropped to a whisper when he described what was in his mind as he was strapped in his seat aboard BA flight 2052 to Harare last Friday night. "I could see my police torturers slowly drowning me."

For the fourth time in 72 hours, the 34-year-old Zimbabwean had found himself handcuffed on an aircraft, squeezed between two Immigration Service minders charged with ensuring his removal.

Every day, on average, three of the 110 Zimbabweans who arrive in Britain every month are being sent back to the capital, Harare, after their asylum applications are refused. Until last night, at least.

Among them are opponents to Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party, including members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), who have fled their homeland to escape an increasingly brutal regime. Some have been granted asylum but, say a coalition of campaigners led by the Refugee Council, most have been returned, bundled, like Paul, at short notice on to an eight-hour flight to face an uncertain fate in a country where an MDC membership card can be a death warrant.

In a brutal reminder of the dangers faced by MDC activists, David Mpala, an MP for the party, was critically ill last night in a Bulawayo hospital after he was stabbed several times by Zanu-PF so-called war veterans.

The Independent has learnt of at least 10 MDC members who have been deported from Britain to face torture, imprisonment or life underground as a political fugitive. This time, Paul a store manager and activist for the small opposition Liberty Party, based in Bulawayo, was lucky.

His lawyers obtained an injunction halting his deportation, and he was taken off the plane 20 minutes before take-off. Over the previous three days, he had been put on four aircraft, operated by South African Airways, Virgin and BA, but each time, legal manoeuvring brought him back to secure, safe detention here.

Paul's story began four years ago, when he was picked up by Zimbabwe's secret police, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), and tortured for three days. He fled to neighbouring South Africa and reached London a year ago.

His final appeal against removal was dismissed by the Immigration Service last month and he was ordered to be deported. He has good reason to fear CIO officers will be waiting for him if he is returned. The CIO monitors every flight to Harare from London, scrutinising passenger lists and may even use agents planted in British asylum centres to identify dissidents.

Yesterday at an Immigration Service detention centre in Harmondsworth, west London, Paul said: "Each time I was sat on those aircraft I was expecting to be sent to my death. I know that when I arrive, the CIO will be waiting for me. My name had been given by the Home Office to the authorities to say I was travelling. It was too good an opportunity for the CIO to miss."

Thanks to the persistence of his lawyers in London, the secret police will have to wait to get their hands on Paul, who lives under an alias and asked for his real identity not to be disclosed. Yesterday, he was trying to obtain documents from his family in Bulawayo to disprove a Home Office claim that he is South African, because he arrived in Britain using false documents.

He believed it is a race to save his life. "I sit in my room, knowing they could come in again with their handcuffs at any moment and sit me in yet another plane. Only this time it might take off."

The softly-spoken activist, who arrived in Britain on 27 January last year, told how he and his family were harassed for his affiliation with the Liberty Party. He and his father were arrested and beaten in 1996 and 1997. After he fled to South Africa, he said he was again preyed on by CIO officers trying to infiltrate Liberty's operation. The only choice, he said, was London where "at least I could not be murdered".

He said: "It is difficult to describe torture. You are beaten. They ask you a question and beat you before you can even answer. It's without mercy, you can't sleep, you're beaten more. They would fill a bag with water, like a rucksack that doesn't leak. Then they would place you in it, face down, until you nearly drowned. That was what I saw when I sat on those planes. My torturers waiting for me."

Lawyers acting for Paul, who has four children, hope to produce documents proving his Zimbabwean nationality within 48 hours to win further time to argue his case.

About 1,200 Zimbabweans made asylum applications to the Home Office last year, of whom 300 are being held in detention, a figure campaigners say is disproportionate. At Oakington detention centre in Cambridgeshire, the secure immigration complex where "certified" cases for fast-track removal are held, Zimbabweans make up the third-largest group.

The Home Office said yesterday it was updating the 10-month-old "country assess-ment" blamed for allowing MDC supporters and other Mugabe opponents to be deported. These rules say opposition activist asylum-seekers are considered "generally at low risk" of retribution from the Zimbabwean authorities.

Professor Terence Ranger, an Africa expert at Oxford University, described the assessment as "essentially compilations of press cuttings" and "shamefully half-hearted". Nick Hardwick, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: "It is imperative that removals to Zimbabwe are suspended immed- iately. The Foreign Office is saying one thing and the Home Office is insisting on believing another."

For those who have already been returned to Harare international airport, any change in British government policy will be too late. Stephen G, a factory worker and MDC activist in rural Zimbabwe, fled to Britain in early 2000 after being attacked by Zanu-PF militias and beaten by CIO officers.

He was returned to Harare last summer, rearrested by the CIO and tortured for two weeks before escaping and fleeing to an undisclosed North African country. He has not been heard from since.

Stephen G was deported despite a report from Dr William Hopkins, principal psychiatrist for the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, that said Stephen had post-traumatic stress disorder. Dr Hopkins said: "If returned to Zimbabwe, he is sure he will be tortured and killed. In his present mental state, he is at significant risk of suicide."

The British Zimbabwe Association (BZA), said at least six MDC activists had been caught and tortured by the CIO after returning from Britain.