CAMP LEJEUNE, NC — A U.S. Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has sparked a yearslong legal battle and raised alarm at the highest levels of government will remain on active duty.
A three-member panel of Marines found Tuesday that Maj. Joshua Mast acted in a manner unbecoming of an officer in his diligent quest to bring the girl homeit did not justify his separation from the army.
Marine Corps attorneys argued that Mast abused his position, disobeyed orders from his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight for the found child. orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan in 2019.
Mast and his wife, Stephanie, were then living in rural Fluvanna County, Virginia. They persuaded a judge there to allow them to adopt the child, even though she remained in Afghanistan while the government there tracked down her extended family and reunited her with them. Mast helped the family flee Afghanistan after the Taliban took power in 2021. Once in the US, Mast used the adoption papers to get the federal government to agree taking the child from her Afghan relatives and give her to him. She has remained with his family ever since.
A five-day investigative committee hearing, held partially behind closed doors at the Marine Forces Special Operations Command at Camp Lejeune, was administrative, not criminal, and intended to determine Mast’s fitness to remain in the military. The worst outcome Mast could have faced was an extremely 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 simply upheld the Marine Corps code by working tirelessly to ensure making sure the girl was safe. . He hung poster-sized photos of the child as a baby at Bagram Airport in Afghanistan and as a smiling toddler in North Carolina at the front of the room.
But because the board has substantiated misconduct, a report will be placed in Mast’s file, which could impact promotions and assignments, the Marines said Tuesday. The board’s report will be sent up to the secretary of the Navy, who will close the case against Mast.
However, the fate of the child remains in limbo. The Afghan couple who raised the child in Afghanistan for eighteen months are trying to reverse Mast’s adoption. The USA The Ministry of Justice has intervened and claimed that Mast lied to a Virginia court and federal officials to justify taking the girl, and that his actions threaten America’s standing around the world.
The Virginia Court of Appeals ruled earlier this year that the adoption should never have been allowed, but the case is stalled in the Virginia Supreme Court.
Lawyers for the Afghan couple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Much of the government’s case at the hearing was held in secret as attorneys presented classified information. Everyone present in the nondescript meeting room was dressed identically in camouflage. And Mast chose to make an unsworn statement in closed session, meaning he was not cross-examined.
But his wife, Stephanie, testified publicly, providing rare insight into the couple’s motivation for working so vigorously to bring the child home. The Masts have long refused to talk to The Associated Press about their actions and the court file in Virginia remains sealed. Both the Masts and the Afghan couple are now not allowed to talk to the media about the lawsuit.
Stephanie Mast cried as she described her husband’s decision to work on bringing the girl back to the United States as an example 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 were allowed to ask questions, and one asked Stephanie Mast why she and her husband continued to try to adopt the girl even after she was reunited with relatives in Afghanistan. They noted that several senior officials, including then-Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and a federal judge, had ordered them to stop.
When she responded that their top priority was to get the child to the United States, the board asked whether the assumption that a child would be better off in the U.S. than in Afghanistan was a product of Western prejudices.
“They have a survival mentality,” she said of the Afghans. “We believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And we wanted her to have that.”
___
Galofaro reported from Louisville, Kentucky, and Mendoza from San Francisco. Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.