A war orphan is claimed by two families: her Afghan relatives and a U.S. Marine who adopted her from 7,000 miles away. An AP investigation pieces together the story of the child, as a judge in a tiny Virginia town decides who gets to keep her.
The Masts searched for a solution halfway around the world — in rural Fluvanna County, Virginia, where they lived.
In late 2019, Afghan officials told the U.S. Embassy that the baby’s paternal uncle had been identified, and he decided his son and daughter-in-law were best suited to take her, according to court records. They were young, educated newlyweds with no children yet of their own, and lived in a city with access to hospitals.
Within hours, four federal attorneys — two from the Justice Department and two from the U.S. Attorney’s Office — were on the phone, and Richard Mast was in Federal Judge Norman Moon’s office. “We didn’t think she would come back to her family alive,” said the young Afghan man. “It was the best day of our lives. After a long time, she had a chance to have a family again.”As the months passed in her new home in Afghanistan, the girl loved getting henna painted on her hands and dressing up in new clothes, the Afghan couple said. She always wanted to do her new mother’s makeup, or brush her hair.
At the same time, the Masts’ adoption case was still winding through the court system in Fluvanna County, Virginia. In December 2020, the state court granted the Masts a final adoption order based on the finding that the child “remains up to this point in time an orphaned, undocumented, stateless minor,” according to a federal lawsuit. Fluvanna County Circuit Court Presiding Judge Richard E. Moore did not respond to repeated requests for clarity on how the cases progressed.
The woman was pregnant, and worried about the risk of such a long flight. They said they asked Mast: Could they take the baby to Pakistan or India for treatment instead? In an email to U.S. officials filed in court, Mast wrote that Osmani was “very instrumental to helping a U.S. Marine…adopt an Afghan child.”
In Germany, the Masts visited the Afghan family’s room three times to try to get the baby to travel separately with them, “insisting that it would be easier for the toddler to enter the United States that way,” the Afghan couple recalled in their lawsuit. They refused to let the girl out of their sight.
Soon after, they said, soldiers came to their room and told them they were moving. A strange woman sat in the back of the van next to a car seat, according to court records, and the baby fussed as she buckled her in. The Afghan couple believed that their baby was stolen, and they immediately sought help at Fort Pickett to get her back.
The Afghan woman plunged into a deep depression and, despite being nine months pregnant, stopped eating and drinking. She could not sleep. Her husband was afraid to leave her alone. On Feb. 27, 2022, when the Afghan baby was 2 ½ years old, the Masts traveled to the Mennonite Christian Assembly in Fredericksburg, Ohio, to share their joy during a special. In a video advertising the event called “Walking in Faith,” the pastor apologized to congregants that it would not be online, because the Marine would share “very confidential, classified information.”
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