An asylum seeker has turned down the job of vice-president of Ecuador to press ahead with his claim to live in England.

Captain Rogelio Viteri was offered a job as head of the country's Ministry of Defence following the election of new President Lucio Gutierrez.

But the 48-year-old former navy captain said he wrote a report about corruption in the Ecuadorian military which has made him enemies.

Now he fears he and his family could be jailed or killed if they return to their South American homeland.

Death threats

"The new president has told me that he will formally offer me the chance to become vice-president, but I will not take it," said Mr Viteri.

"Even to go back as a member of the government, we will still be at risk.

The military put me in jail and made preparations to have me disappeared

Mr Viteri

"The military are the real rulers of the country and they will attempt to kill us."

Mr Viteri, his wife Rocio, son Sebastion, 10, and daughter Michelle, 19, have lived in Market Harborough in Leicestershire, for about two years.

Mr Viteri said his family became targets in Ecuador because he wrote a report on military corruption while stationed at Ecuador's London embassy as an attach�.

Smear campaign

When he returned to Ecuador to deliver the report last November he was arrested and jailed for 15 days.

"The military put me in jail and made preparations to have me disappeared," said Mr Viteri.

Lucio Gutierrez won the election earlier this week

"It is only because my wife contacted one of the country's largest television shows about my plight that I was released.

"She saved my life."

The report won him admirers in political circles, but angered military officials, who began a smear campaign against him after he returned to England, he said.

The couple returned to Ecuador in January leaving their children in England but he said attempts on their lives were made and they fled back to Leicestershire in June, claiming asylum.

Mr Viteri said: "We had a status in our own country, one which we do not have here, but we are happy with that because we know will stay alive."

The family's asylum application is being supported by Harborough's Tory MP Edward Garnier QC and an anonymous local businessman.