BBC News Online's Nicola McGann speaks to close family friend Paul Rowlands about their decision.

On Christmas Eve, the Ahmadi family were told they had lost their appeal against deportation from the UK to Germany.

Now, after months of battling to return to the place they call home, the Afghan family have given up their fight to return to Britain.

Fariba Ahmadi, at the age of 24, has spent weeks undergoing psychiatric treatment at a German hospital and her husband, Farid, feels the lengthy appeal process would have a detrimental effect on his wife's deteriorating mental health.

It brings an end to a case which has been scrutinized by the media since February 2002, when the Ahmadi's first began their battle to remain at their home in Lye, near Stourbridge, in the West Midlands.

Children's safety

The couple and their two children Seear, four, and Hadia, six, fled their native Kabul in 2000 amid claims that Farid had been tortured by the then ruling regime, the Taleban.

They have lost their home, their self-respect and any future they may have had for their children but they have not lost the love and support we all still hold for them here Family friend Paul Rowlands

The family ended up in Germany and spent ten months in detention centres before finally arriving in Dover smuggled in the back of a lorry with another family.

Mrs Ahmadi said she loved England and the people and wanted to raise her children in safety here.

Despite several campaigns to Downing Street on the family's behalf and a very public forced eviction from a Mosque the family had taken refuge in near their home, they were deported back to Germany in August last year.

For more than four months they battled to overturn the Home Office decision to deport them, which a High Court judge ruled was "unlawful".

'Family traumatised'

But on Christmas Eve, they lost their appeal against deportation and, it would now seem, their hope of returning to the West Midlands.

The raid on the mosque was widely condemned

Close family friend Paul Rowlands, who has visited the family several times in Germany, told BBC News Online the strain of the appeal hearing has been enormous.

He said: "Over this extremely distressing time, Farid was the main carer not only for Fariba but also his children.

"The family have been traumatised. They have good grounds for an appeal but they have been advised this could take up to 12 months.

"Farid feels Fariba and the children will not be able to cope with this, therefore they have decided not to appeal."

'No self-respect'

He said the family remained in a camp near Munich and are waiting to hear whether the authorities there will allow them to stay in Germany or deport them to Afghanistan.

"They have no status in Germany. They have lost their home, their self-respect and any future they may have had for their children but they have not lost the love and support we all still hold for them here," Mr Rowlands added.

"When I first met the family, I thought 'asylum seekers - dirty, thieves'. It wasn't racist, I had never met an asylum seeker before, and I was just going on the impression I had got from the media.

"It was a shock when I got to know them and they were decent people. We've since spent a lot of time with them and made lots of friends in Germany.

"I think there is good and bad in every country and we will continue to support the Ahmadis wherever they are."