The federal government reportedly warned a Virginia judge that allowing U.S. Marine Joshua Mast to keep an Afghan war orphan would be problematic.
According to the Associated Press, U.S. soldiers operating in Afghanistan found a female infant “injured in the rubble after a U.S.-Afghan military raid in a rural part of the country in September 2019.”
“She spent more than five months in a U.S. military hospital before the Afghan government and International Committee of the Red Cross determined she had living relatives, and united her with them,” the AP originally reported in March.
There was just one problem: When Mast learned about the infant, he inexplicably decided that he and his wife should be her caretakers.
“The Masts told Virginia Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore that she was the daughter of transient terrorists who died in the fight, and thus a stateless orphan. He claimed that the Afghan government was prepared to waive jurisdiction over her, though it never did. Moore granted him the adoption,” according to the AP.
“The Masts [then] contacted the [child’s relatives] in Afghanistan, offering to help with her medical treatment. After the U.S. military withdrew and Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in 2021, the Masts helped them evacuate to the United States. Once they arrived, Mast used the adoption order to take the child, and the Afghan couple have not seen her since,” the AP notes.
Enter the Department of Justice, which submitted a filing over the summer warning the judge now presiding over the case, Fluvanna County Circuit Court Judge Claude Worrell, that allowing Mast to keep the child (now reportedly four years old) would amount to “endorsing an act of international child abduction.”
Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs has called the abduction of an Afghan infant girl who lost all her family in an American bombardment, by a US Marine officer Joshua Mast, far from human dignity and an inhuman act. pic.twitter.com/9KtojrOvnO
— KABUL NEWS (@kabulnewstv) October 23, 2022
“Failing to return the child, now 4, to Afghan relatives in the U.S. could jeopardize American efforts to resettle Afghan refugees, threaten international security pacts and might be used as propaganda by Islamic extremists — potentially endangering U.S soldiers overseas,” the government warned, as reported by the AP.
The DOJ also slammed Moore, the judge who had approved the adoption, saying he’d relied on “intentional misrepresentations” from Mast and skipped what the AP calls “critical safeguards.”
“The grave harm that the Masts have inflicted upon the Child, her family, and the United States is ongoing. Most troublingly, the child remains with the Masts to this day,” the filing reads.
That said, Worrell has reportedly partly blamed the government itself for this fiasco, noting that multiple government agencies and employees had helped Mast.
“The left hand of the United States is doing one thing and the right hand of the United States is doing something else,” he said.
Since this situation erupted, Mast has faced attacks from the left over his Christian views, with the premise being that it was his religious views that had inspired him to do something so arguably despicable.
Mast met his wife “at Liberty University, a Christian college in Lynchburg, Va., founded by the evangelical pastor and activist Jerry Falwell ‘to influence the moral and ethical course of America,'” The New York Times noted last November.
“On his Facebook page, Mast described himself as ‘a Christian man, a husband, a father, an American and a Marine,'” the paper added.
This US Marine abducted a baby from an Afghan couple and is refusing to return her.
Joshua Mast is a religious extremist who snatched the baby girl from her biological relatives after the withdrawal of Afghanistan and is currently a Major at a US Marine base in North Carolina. pic.twitter.com/khSMREDanw
— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) October 21, 2022
In earlier court filings, Mast’s lawyer wrote that he and his wife had acted in good faith and worked at “great personal expense and sacrifice” to take in the child and “provide her a loving home.”
Yet then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly signed a cable in 2020 to the embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan describing the custody order Mast had received as “flawed in a number of respects.”
He also questioned how any U.S. court would have jurisdiction over an Afghan child and said the State Department has “concerns about the perception of the U.S. government holding an Afghan child against the will of her extended family and the Afghan government.”
Joshua Mast actively befriended this family and helped them come to the US for the EXPRESS PURPOSE of stealing their child when they got here, in violation of international law as explained to him by both the US and Afghan government. He’s a monster. https://t.co/D3J0qL1tv5
— Anju Chirayil (@fountofsarcasm) November 23, 2022
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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