A legal team supporting a Chinese trade unionist and her two-year-old son, who face deportation back to China after five years in Scotland, is expected to seek a High Court judicial review today to stop her leaving.

Birmingham-based solicitors Harvey Son & Filby, who specialise in Chinese law, are due to make the last-minute bid at the High Court in London to stop the deportation of Qin Wang and her son Jian Qi Lin. They are expected to use European human rights legislation to argue the case.

Friends who have visited her in detention said Qin Wang, who lived in Sandyhills, Glasgow, talked of killing herself rather than returning to China, where she says she was beaten and indecently assaulted by police when detained in connection with outlawed union activities.

The mother and son are due to be flown back to China today on a Russian Aeroflot plane from Heathrow. It further emerged last night that Aeroflot has been flooded with messages by e-mail and fax from supporters appealing to them not to co-operate with the deportation.

Qin Wang's solicitors claim the Home Office took issue with the activist "going underground" for four years - scared she would be sent back to China - after first registering as an asylum seeker when she arrived in 2003. She re-registered in 2007 but failed to convince the Home Office of her refugee status.

Phil Jones, of the Unity Centre, the Glasgow-based help centre which supports asylum seekers and refugees, said he believed any travel issues over the removal from Britain appeared to be ironed out between the Home Office and Chinese authorities. He hoped the judicial review would mean that the flight would be stopped.

"The case is all to do with the fact that if she returns to China, she would be imprisoned," he said.