US EditionUS government worked against itself to let Marine adopt Afghan girl, documents obtained by AP show
Thousands of pages of records reveal U.S. officials and a Virginia judge bypassed legal safeguards to adopt an Afghan war orphan contrary to government policy.
- U.S. federal records reveal Fluvanna County Circuit Judge Richard Moore granted an adoption while the Afghan girl remained in Afghanistan, 7,000 miles away.
- Because the judge relied on Mast's claim that the girl was `stateless`, Judge Moore waived safeguards like requiring her presence and investigating her history.
- Despite objections, U.S. military officials and U.S. State Department employees tried to stop and aid the Afghan family evacuation during summer of 2021, producing conflicting responses.
- The Justice Department warned that the episode threatens the nation's standing and appears as an endorsement of child trafficking, while Judge Moore later acknowledged `procedural irregularity, defect or deficiency in the case`.
- The Taliban called the removal `worrying, far from human dignity and an inhumane act`, and the Afghan couple's names were withheld by the Associated Press fearing Taliban retaliation, Afghan relatives testified they wept upon reunion.
36 Articles
36 Articles
How U.S. government worked against itself to let Marine adopt Afghan girl: AP
Thousands of pages of once-secret court documents show how federal officials and a Virginia court helped an American Marine adopt an Afghan war orphan, in defiance of the U.S. government’s official policy to unite the child with her family. The Associated Press fought for three years for access to the documents, which reveal how the country’s fractured bureaucracy enabled Marine Joshua Mast and his wife, Stephanie, to adopt the child who was hal…
The US said a Virginia Marine could not adopt an Afghan girl. Records show officials helped him get her.
The judge wanted everyone in the courtroom to know that when he’d signed a war orphan over to an American Marine he thought it was an emergency — that the child injured on the battlefield in Afghanistan was on death’s door, with neither a family nor a country to claim her. A lawyer for the federal government stood up. “That is not what happened,” she told the judge: almost everything he’d believed about the baby was untrue. This group had gather…
The U.S. said a Marine could not adopt an Afghan girl. Records show officials helped him get her
The judge wanted everyone in the courtroom to know that when he’d signed a war orphan over to an American Marine he thought it was an emergency — that the child injured on the battlefield in Afghanistan was on death’s door, with neither a family nor a country to claim her. Read more...
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