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An Afghan couple who came to the U.S. following the chaotic withdrawal of American troops from the country in August 2021 filed a new lawsuit accusing a Marine of kidnapping after the service member and his wife had finalized the adoption of a baby girl whose biological parents were killed in a raid on an alleged terrorist compound.
The girl, now 3 ½ years old, arrived at an airport in Washington, D.C., with a newlywed Afghan couple, purportedly the child’s cousin and pregnant wife, last summer. Five days later, Joshua Mast, a U.S. Marine Corps lawyer, took the girl away to live with him and his wife, Stephanie, in rural Virginia, according to a federal lawsuit filed in September.
The suit accuses the Masts of false imprisonment, conspiracy, fraud and assault.
But in rural Virginia court, Joshua Mast several months before had already finalized the adoption of the girl, who U.S. troops pulled from the rubble after attacking a remote compound on Sept. 6, 2019.
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This illustration depicts a baby being held, and an airplane leaving the Kabul, Afghanistan airport. (AP Illustration/Nat Castaneda)
The Associated Press first reported on the case on Thursday, citing hundreds of pages of legal filings and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The legal battle has drawn in the departments of Defense, Justice and State, over concerns about how it could significantly harm military and foreign relations.
No details about September 2019 attack 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.
Mast said that rather than surrender, a man detonated a suicide vest; five of his six children in the room were killed, and their mother was shot to death while resisting arrest.
At just two months old, the baby suffered a fractured skull, broken leg and serious burns and was rushed to a U.S. military hospital, where she was placed in the custody of the Department of Defense.
Sehla Ashai and Maya Eckstein, attorneys for the Afghan couple, dispute Mast’s account. They say the baby’s parents were farmers, unaffiliated with any terrorist group, and the attack left two civilians and five of their children dead.
Hundreds of people gather near a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane at the perimeter of the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Shekib Rahmani, File)
Mast, on temporary assignment in Afghanistan working as a military lawyer, said, he was "aggressively" advocating to get the child to the U.S. Over several months, he wrote to then-Vice President Mike Pence’s office.
He said his colleagues in the military tried to talk to former President Donald Trump about the baby during a Thanksgiving visit to Bagram Airfield. Mast also said he made four requests over two weeks to then-White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, asking for help to medically evacuate the baby.
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.
Families evacuated from Kabul, Afghanistan, wait to board a bus after they arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport, in Chantilly, Va., on Friday, Aug. 27, 2021. In late summer 2021, the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
The State Department communicated its position: Under international humanitarian law, the U.S. was obliged to do everything possible to reunite the baby with her next of kin, according to the AP.
Later, the Masts petitioned the local Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court halfway around the world — in rural Fluvanna County, Virginia, where they lived. In early November 2019, a judge granted them legal custody. A few days later, a certificate of foreign birth listed Joshua and Stephanie Mast as parents.
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."
But when the child was five months old, the Red Cross said they’d found her biological family.
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.
Mast expressed doubts about the newly-found uncle, describing him in court records as "an anonymous person of unknown nationality" and claiming that turning the baby over to him was "inherently dangerous." But the girl was placed in the couple’s Afghanistan home, where they say she was treated like their own daughter.
Smoke billows from the Green Village, home to several international organizations and guesthouses, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2019. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, File)
In emails to a U.S. military office requesting evacuation, Mast alleged that he read more than 150 pages of classified documents, and concluded the child was a "stateless minor." According to court records, Mast believed she was the daughter of transient terrorists who are citizens of no country. He also speculated that if reunited with her family, she could be made a child soldier or a suicide bomber, sold into sex trafficking, hit in a U.S. military strike, or stoned for being a girl. His attorney argued no DNA test was done to confirm the Afghan couple’s relation to the girl.
When Taliban fighters began to quickly seize control of the country, Mast eventually began communicating with the couple, applying for visas for them to escort the child out of the country. In the summer of 2021, the Afghan couple and girl were eventually flown to Germany for the stopover, where Mast and his wife met them for the first time. The Masts wanted the girl to travel separately to the U.S. with them, but the Afghan couple refused.
When the Afghan couple arrived at the airport in D.C. in late August 2021, Mast pulled them out of the international arrivals line and led them to an inspecting officer, according to the lawsuit. Mast presented a passport for the child with his own last name on it – allegedly to the Afghan couple’s surprise.
The Afghan couple requested to go to Fort Pickett, where thousands of Afghan refugees were being temporarily house. That’s where a social worker told them the Masts were the girl’s legal guardian and the child was taken away.
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The fate of the Afghan child is now being debated in secret proceedings in a locked courtroom in the village of Palmyra, Virginia, home to about 100 people, according to the AP.
The Afghan couple now lives in Texas, and the wife, who gave birth to a baby girl of her own since, says she is still devastated and planned on raising the girls as sisters though they have never met.
Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department and Department of Defense for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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