Military Court Rules: Maj. Joshua Mast, Acused of Abducting an Afgan Baby May Remain a Marine

Marine Maj. Joshua Mast, arrives at Circuit Court for a hearing in an ongoing custody battle over an Afghan orphan.Photo byAssociated Press

In a bizarre case before federal courts and a military court an United States Marine, Maj. Joshua Mast, who claim his wife and him, were attempting to adopt and save an Afgan infant girl, has garnered the attention of the highest ranks of governmen, created a diplomatic issue and was tried before a United States military court facing potential disciplinary action to include discharge from the military.

The bizarre case of Maj. Joshua Mast has landed him in both US Federal Court and before a military court concerning, what he claims is an adoption, and Afgan parents claim is a theft and a kidnapping of their daughter.

The Associated Press ran an initial story on the case when it was filed in the district courts outlining the chain of events that could have resulted in Maj. Mast with a discharge...

A young Afghan couple raced to the airport in Kabul, clutching their baby girl close amid the chaotic withdrawal of American troops.

The baby had been rescued two years earlier from the rubble of a U.S. military raid that killed her parents and five siblings. After months in a U.S. military hospital, she had gone to live with her cousin and his wife, this newlywed couple. Now, the family was bound for the United States for further medical treatment, with the aid of U.S. Marine Corps attorney Joshua Mast.

When the exhausted Afghans arrived at the airport in Washington, D.C., in late August 2021, Mast pulled them out of the international arrivals line and led them to an inspecting officer, according to a lawsuitthey filed last month. They were surprised when Mast presented an Afghan passport for the child, the couple said. But it was the last name printed on the document that stopped them cold: Mast.

They didn’t know it, but they would soon lose their baby.

This is a story about how one U.S. Marine became fiercely determined to bring home an Afghan war orphan, and praised it as an act of Christian faith to save her. Letters, emails and documents submitted in federal filings show that he used his status in the U.S. Armed Forces, appealed to high-ranking Trump administration officials and turned to small-town courts to adopt the baby, unbeknownst to the Afghan couple raising her 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometers) away.

The little girl, now 3 ½ years old, is at the center of a high-stakes tangle of at least four court cases. The Afghan couple, desperate to get her back, has sued Mast and his wife, Stephanie Mast. But the Masts insist they are her legal parents and “acted admirably” to protect her. They’ve asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit.

The ordeal has drawn in the U.S. departments of Defense, Justice and State, which have argued that the attempt to spirit away a citizen of another country could significantly harm military and foreign relations. It has also meant that a child who survived a violent raid, was hospitalized for months and escaped the fall of Afghanistan has had to split her short life between two families, both of which now claim her.

The most recent event was the military trial that just ended.

Maj. Joshua Mast whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan spurred these legal battles and raised alarms at the highest levels of government will remain on active duty.

A three-member panel of Marines found Tuesday that while Maj. Joshua Mast acted in a way unbecoming of an officer in his zealous quest to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military, per reporting by Military.com.

Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan in 2019.

Mast and his wife, Stephanie, then lived in rural Fluvanna County, Virginia. They persuaded a judge there to grant them an adoption of the child, even though she remained in Afghanistan as the government there tracked down her extended family and reunited her with them. Mast helped the family flee Afghanistan after the Taliban took over in 2021. Once in the U.S., Mast used the adoption papers to get the federal government to take the child from her Afghan relatives and give her to him. She has remained with his family ever since.

A five-day board of inquiry hearing held partially behind closed doors at the Marine Forces Special Operations Command at Camp Lejeune was administrative, not criminal, and intended to determine whether Mast was fit to remain in the military. The worst outcome Mast might have faced was an other-than-honorable discharge

Mast, 41, who now lives in Hampstead, North Carolina, denied the allegations against him, insisting he never disobeyed orders but was encouraged by his supervisors, and was simply upholding the code of the Marine Corps by working tirelessly to ensure the girl was safe. At the front of the room, he set up poster-sized photos of the child as a baby at Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield and as a smiling toddler in North Carolina.

But because the board substantiated misconduct, a report will be entered into Mast's file, which could affect promotions and assignments, the Marines said Tuesday. The board’s report will be sent up the ladder to the Secretary of the Navy, who will close the case against Mast.

The child’s fate, however, remains in limbo. The Afghan couple who raised the child for 18 months in Afghanistan is seeking to have Mast’s adoption of her undone. The U.S. Department of Justice has intervened and contended that Mast lied to the Virginia court and federal officials to justify taking the girl, and his actions threaten America’s standing around the world.

The State Department issued a statement Tuesday that said its decision to work with the Afghan government and International Committee of the Red Cross to reunite the child with her Afghan relatives “was consistent with international law and U.S. policy to take appropriate steps to facilitate the reunion of families separated during armed conflict.”

The statement reiterated that it has insisted the Virginia courts return the child to the Afghan family.

The Virginia Court of Appeals ruled earlier this year that the adoption should have never been granted but the case is stalled at the Virginia Supreme Court.

Lawyers for the Afghan couple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Much of the government’s case in the hearing was held in secret because lawyers were presenting classified information. Everyone present in the nondescript conference room was dressed identically in camouflage. And Mast chose to make an unsworn statement in a closed session, which meant he was not subject to cross-examination.

But his wife, Stephanie, testified publicly, offering rare insight into the couple’s motivation for working so vigorously to bring the child into their home. The Masts have long declined to talk to The Associated Press about their actions and the Virginia court file remains sealed. The Masts, as well as the Afghan couple, are now barred from speaking to the media about the state court case.

Stephanie Mast wept as she described her husband’s decision to work to bring the girl back to the United States as exemplary of his commitment to Marine Corps values.

“It was very much an American response,” she said. “We value human life. As Marines, you serve and protect.”

The deciding panel of two lieutenant colonels and a colonel was allowed to ask questions, and one asked Stephanie Mast why she and her husband continued to try to adopt the girl even after she had been reunited with relatives in Afghanistan. They noted that multiple high-ranking officials, including then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a federal judge, told them to stop.

When she responded that getting the child to the United States was their highest priority, the board asked whether the assumption that a child would be better off in the U.S. rather than Afghanistan was a product of Western bias.

“They have a survival mentality,” she said of Afghans as reported by military .com. “We believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And we wanted her to have that.”

The case is on the activist list of the Afgan Network for Advocacy and Resources, where its claims that the Mast family abused power and appeals to government officials, who enable them in their efforts to abduct Baby Doe. From what has been made public through investigative reports, we know that the Masts met with Congressional and Senate officials, including Senator Ted Cruz.

The other state and Federal cases are still pending and as such we will continue to follow this story and report on the developments.