"College student Lorraine Thulambo, aged 18, attempted to kill herself after two months spent locked up in the Yarl's Wood Detention Centre in Bedfordshire.

She was rescued with only seconds to spare after her sister Valerie and mother Priviledge raised the alarm and security staff broke into her room.

She was resuscitated and taken for medical treatment. A letter she had written for her family to find said she felt she had "suffered enough" and had lost hope that life would ever be better in the UK.

Today Valerie, 20, said her little sister was recovering, but added: "She is still very low."

The girls' mother Priviledge, 39, who says she was tortured and raped in Zimbabwe by President Robert Mugabe's men and her husband killed, is ill and needs regular hospital appointments.

Sheffield Hallam MP and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said there was enormous sympathy and compassion in the city for the family and their plight.

"The family have got lots of friends in Sheffield," he said.

Priviledge arrived in the UK in 2000, her daughters followed in 2004, and they settled in Heavygate Road, Walkley.

But the Home Office refuses to grant the family asylum because it claims they are not from Zimbabwe but Malawi, a country to which it is safe to return.

The Thulmabos insist they are Zimbabwean - and that their Malawian passports were fakes used only as a desperate means of escape.

The family is being supported by campaigners in Sheffield and by the Zimbabwe Community Network UK, whose city-based chief adviser is Preacher Prince Muguza.

He said the women have already proved their true nationality many times over - by producing their Zimbabwean National Registration Cards, Zimbabwean driving licences, and Zimbabwean birth certificates.

They are currently in legal limbo, awaiting an oral court hearing, having been spared deportation in December.""