A hearing to decide the fate of a refugee working as a tailor in Bradford will also decide the future of a small business.

For the owner believes he will never be able to find a replacement with the right skills.

After two years of hearings and court appearances, Iraqi Kurd Warzer Mirza has now learned that July 15 is the day it all ends.

His final appeal against deportation will be conducted via video link from Leeds to the Home Office in London.

If he loses, he claims he will be sent home to risk death at the hands of religious extremists for his part in staging a sculpture exhibition on "the Freedom of Women" at the Institute of Fine Art in Sullaymaniyah in northern Iraq three years ago.

Four of his co-organisers were killed soon after the exhibition in 2000, the year he fled to England.

Since then, he has worked for Ray Lister at his bespoke tailor's in Westgate, Bradford. And, if Mr Mirza leaves, his boss believes time will be up for the business.

"Before Warzer came here I was at my wits' end trying to find a tailor with the right degree of skill," said Mr Lister, 65.

"I know from experience that I have little chance of replacing him. There are few master tailors around these days. So, reluctantly, I would probably have to shut up shop and the other people who work here would lose their jobs."

Mr Lister's business is a rarity in the Bradford area. Most tailors ship out hand-stitching overseas, where labour is cheaper and the quality of workmanship is not as high, he says.

"There are few people in the UK who can produce traditional hand-stitched buttonholes these days, for instance. Most such items are mass-produced," said Mr Lister.

"Warzer is a real craftsman who learned his trade at his father's tailor's in Iraq. If I lose him, I would have to farm out the work. I've had to do it before, in emergencies, and it's been an absolute disaster. You never get the same standard.

"I wouldn't want to carry on under those conditions and although I love the work and am still healthy, I'd have to consider getting out. That would mean the end for the other people here, too."

Mr Lister has sold quality clothes from his shop on Westgate for 20 years and at North Parade for ten years before that.

A negative decision by the Home Office would mean a flight to Iraq for Warzer Mirza and a lifetime of looking over his shoulder.

A sculptor and painter who has been studying here in his spare time, he was certainly no economic migrant.

"I didn't come here thinking about money, money," he said. "I had a very good life in Iraq but I had to leave or be killed. If I go back they will come after me."