A legal case is being put together to fight against the sudden deportation of a Croatian asylum seeker who had been working in Cardiff for two years.

Milan Simic - who had been granted temporary asylum - was sent to a detention centre near Heathrow airport apparently without warning after attending a routine check at Rhymney Police Station.

Nicola Blake: 'Concerns'

His fiancé, Nicola Blake, said she now fears for the safety of Mr Simic, an Orthodox Serb, who escaped during the Balkans fearing he would be called on by the Serb army to fight his Croat neighbours.

"We popped in for his weekly registration after getting a bottle of wine to take home, and he never came back out," she said.

"I just don't understand. He is not costing the government any money. It will be a devastating feeling if he goes - he's got a family."

Mr Simic, 21, who had been working in a bar in the Welsh capital, will now be flown back to his native Croatia on Sunday unless a last-minute High Court appeal can overturn the ruling Friday.

Mr Simic does not want to return to the former Yugoslavia

That is being made by his London-based solicitor Jovanka Savic who believes the Home Office has acted wrong procedurally in not giving her client warning of or reasons for his deportation.

She explained that Home Secretary David Blunkett refused his formal asylum application in September 2001.

But that decision was overturned by an adjudicator, whose own decision was later quashed by a tribunal, leaving Mr Simic still on temporary residency in the UK.

We popped in to the police station and he never came back out

Nicola Blake, girlfriend

Ms Savic is confident that filing for a High Court judicial review Friday would block the deportation for at least six weeks.

"His original appeal was granted on human rights grounds because he had already been subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment," she told BBC News Online.

"He has been given no reason for his arrest or deportation; he is a capable, intelligent person.

"If someone has regularly complied with conditions of temporary admission, this cannot be right. There is absolutely no justification."

She blamed the Immigration Service for changing a policy granting 28 days notice before deportation.

The Home Office said a right of appeal is granted in all such cases.