Home Office officials have so far failed in their efforts to deport a convicted sex offender back to his native Zimbabwe.

Arnold Nhliziyo, 25, of Ditton Road, Surbiton, is on the sex offenders' register, after being convicted in September 2005 of trespassing with intent to commit a sexual offence.

Immigration officials tried to deport him last year but were obliged to release him back into the community after the Government banned deportations to Zimbabwe in July 2005 to prevent human rights abuses by Robert Mugabe's regime.

Last Wednesday Nhliziyo was cleared of rape in a car park in Fife Road, Kingston, on February 18. A judge at Kingston Crown Court ordered a not guilty verdict after the alleged victim dropped all charges.

Immediately afterwards, officials re-served Nhliziyo with deportation papers and he was transferred to Wandsworth Prison. Proceedings are ongoing but privately officials are not hopeful that their efforts to have him deported will succeed because a blanket ban on deportation to Zimbabwe remains in place.

Nhliziyo's mother Hildegard, a born-again Christian, keeps a picture of her son in her bible and believes the charges against him have been lies.

She pleaded with officials not to send him back into the clutches of Robert Mugabe's regime.

She said: "He is a nice boy and has never been violent. Since he came over here, he has not been to church and has been drinking and going out, and he has just got into problems.

"But he has told me he has never done any of things they claim.

"If they send him back to Zimbabwe, they will kill him."

Nhliziyo, 6ft 2in, arrived in the UK in 2003 on a student visa to live with his parents.

Following his conviction in 2005, he was ordered to attend a community sex offender rehabilitation programme and to sign the sex offenders' register.