By Alasdair Sandford, BBC News, Paris.
A French woman originally from Sierra Leone faces a legal battle with immigration authorities to keep her teenage daughter, even though the two were only recently reunited after a 10-year separation.
Sallay Jabbi was reunited with her daughter in the US.
For most of that time Sallay Jabbi believed Dora - now 14 - to be dead, following a rebel attack on their village during the long civil war in the 1990s.
On Monday morning, 12 January, Sallay will drop her daughter at the school gates in Agen, south-west France, where the 37-year-old refugee lives with her husband and their two other children.
Dora was registered with the French education authorities on 9 January.
But she has only been granted a three-month visa to remain in the country. Obtaining permission to stay for longer is by no means a formality.
Mother and daughter were reunited on New Year’s Day when Dora arrived at Bordeaux airport.
"When I saw her, I knew immediately it was her," says Sallay, even though the last time she had seen her daughter was as a four-year-old.
Their lives were forced apart one night in 1998, when rebels from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) attacked the family’s village of Bunban.
Sallay, who had previously lost her first husband - Dora’s father - in an accident, says her own father was burned alive in the assault.
She lost consciousness after being attacked with machetes and hot irons, leaving marks which are still visible today. Taken to a prisoner camp, she awoke to find no sign of her daughter.
Emotional reunion
Sallay says that for years she was convinced that Dora had died - until a chance encounter in the US in 2006.
By then the mother had long been living in France with her new husband.
The civil war in Sierra Leone scattered and broke up families
On a visit to Philadelphia to see some friends, also refugees from Sierra Leone, Sallay ran into a former neighbour. The woman told her that her daughter was alive and being looked after by a local family.
Sallay Jabbi made contact with her daughter, but the initial joy was soon replaced by anxiety as she set about trying to bring Dora to France.
The difficulties were formidable: communicating with Sierra Leone was hard, France had no diplomatic mission in the country, and Sallay had made no mention of Dora when she applied for asylum.
It was not until late 2008 that Dora travelled to neighbouring Guinea - after much effort to find a local family to host her - to try to obtain a visa from the French consulate in Conakry.
The application was cleared in principle, but the process threatened to drag on into the new year year. It took an appeal to the Foreign Ministry in Paris before Dora got the green light to fly in for her emotional New Year reunion.
Legal fight
The family’s French lawyer, Laurent Bruneau, says Sallay’s new nationality entitles her daughter to a long-term visa.
Applying for this in the first instance was out of the question: it would have taken too long and the authorities could have rejected the application without giving a reason. The daughter should be allowed to stay for both judicial and humanitarian reasons.
Now, (Bruneau) argues, her claim is threatened by French immigration rules.
French law requires the daughter to apply for the visa in the country from where she came - impractical and potentially dangerous, he says, given the current security situation in Guinea.
"The daughter should be allowed to stay for both judicial and humanitarian reasons", Mr Bruneau told BBC News, "and France should respect international law".
He says that accords such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the European Convention on Human Rights, oblige France to allow mother and child to remain together.
No doubt has been cast as to whether the family link is genuine, and Dora has a valid birth certificate. Nonetheless, the lawyer fears the local prefecture may reject her application, in which case he is ready to petition the local administrative court.
While she awaits the next stage of her legal battle, Dora can concentrate on renewing her relationship with her mother, and on her new school life.
Sallay says her daughter is looking forward to learning French to be able to communicate with her new brothers and sisters.
Photo: Sallay(left) and daughter Dora.
Credit: BBC News.
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