Afghan Couple Accuses US Marine of Abducting Their Baby Using Secretive US Court System
Five days after the Afghans arrived in the U.S., they say Mast — custody papers in hand — took her away.
“Joshua and Stephanie Mast have done nothing but ensure she receives the medical care she requires, at great personal expense and sacrifice, and provide her a loving home,” wrote the Masts’ attorneys. That September in 2019 was one of the deadliest months of the entire U.S. occupation in Afghanistan, with more than 110 civilians killed in the first week alone.No details about this event are publicly available, but in court documents Mast claims that classified reports show the U.S. government “sent helicopters full of special operators to capture or kill” a foreign fighter.
Meanwhile, Mast said, he was “aggressively” advocating to get her to the U.S. Over several months, he wrote to then-Vice President Mike Pence’s office, according to exhibits filed in court. He said his colleagues in the military tried to talk to President Donald Trump about the baby during a Thanksgiving visit to Bagram Airfield.
About six weeks after the baby was rescued, the U.S. Embassy called for a meeting, attended by representatives of the Red Cross, the Afghan government and the American military, including Mast. The State Department wanted to make sure everyone understood its position: Under international humanitarian law, the U.S. was obliged to do everything possible to reunite the baby with her next of kin.
Yet two days after the embassy meeting, a letter was sent to U.S. officials in Kabul from Kimberley Motley, a near-celebrity American attorney in Afghanistan, the State Department official said. Motley wrote that she was representing an unnamed concerned American citizen who wished to adopt this baby. Motley declined to be interviewed by the AP.
In an email to the AP, Ghani’s former deputy chief of staff Suhrob Ahmad said there is “no record of this alleged statement of waiver of Afghan jurisdiction.” Ahmad said he and the head of the Administrative Office of the President do not remember any such request going through the court system as required.
The young man worked in a medical office and ran a co-ed school, which is unusual in Afghanistan. His wife graduated from high school at the top of her class, and is fluent in three languages, including English. They had married for love, unlike many Afghans in arranged marriages. 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.” Over the course of a year, Motley called for updates about the child and occasionally asked for photos. In July, around the baby’s first birthday, the couple sent Motley a snapshot of the child in swim trunks, smiling and splashing in a wading pool.
But the Afghan man now raising her, who had worked in the medical field, did not think her burn scars, a leg injury and mysterious allergic reactions amounted to a life-altering condition in the way Mast described. The couple declined sending the baby to the United States. Mast applied for special visas for the Afghan family and for relatives of Osmani, the translator, according to court records. They characterized the Afghan couple as an escort for a “U.S. military dependent” — the baby.
When the family arrived in Germany for a stopover, Joshua Mast and his wife greeted them at the air force base. It was the first time they had met in person. The Afghan couple asked to be taken to Fort Pickett Army National Guard base, a location specified by Mast, according to the lawsuit. Thousands of Afghan refugees were temporarily housed there.
Richard Mast is also named as a defendant in the Afghan family’s lawsuit. He wrote in legal documents that his brother’s adoption of the child was “selfless;” it saved both the child, and the Afghan family fighting to get her back, “from the evils of life under the Taliban.” And so they tried to maintain contact with Mast. They were also scared of him. If he could abduct their child in broad daylight, they worried he might hurt them too, their lawyers wrote in legal filings.
Soon the couple sought legal help; by December 2021, the Afghan couple had asked the Fluvanna judge to reverse the adoption. But those proceedings, almost one year in, have been opaque and slow.
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