Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military.
Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that 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, lived in rural Fluvanna County, Virginia, at the time. A judge there granted them an adoption of the child, even though she remained in Afghanistan as the Afghan government tracked down her extended family and reunited her with them.
Photo: AP
Joshua Mast helped the family flee Afghanistan after the Taliban took over in 2021. Once in the US, he used the adoption papers to adopt her.
A five-day board of inquiry hearing held partially behind closed doors at the Marine Forces Special Operations Command at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina was administrative, not criminal, and intended to determine whether Joshua Mast was fit to remain in the military.
The worst outcome he might have faced was an other-than-honorable discharge.
Joshua Mast, 41, who now lives in Hampstead, North Carolina, denied the allegations against him, saying that he never disobeyed orders, but was encouraged by his supervisors, and was simply upholding the code of the Marine Corps by ensuring that the girl was safe.
At the front of the room, he set up poster-sized photographs of the child as a baby at Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield and as a smiling toddler in North Carolina.
However, because the board substantiated misconduct, a report would be entered into his file, which could affect promotions and assignments, the Marines said on Tuesday.
The board’s report would be sent to the Secretary of the US Navy, who is expected to close the case against Joshua Mast.
However, the child’s fate remains in limbo. The Afghan couple who raised the child for 18 months in Afghanistan is seeking to have the Mast’s adoption of her undone.
The US Department of Justice said that Joshua Mast lied to the Virginia court and federal officials to justify adopting the girl, and his actions threaten the US’ standing around the world.
The US Department of State said in a statement that 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 US policy to take appropriate steps to facilitate the reunion of families separated during armed conflict.”
The Virginia Court of Appeals earlier this year ruled 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.
Stephanie Mast testified that her husband’s decision to bring the girl to the US was 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 said that multiple high-ranking officials, including then-US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and a federal judge, told them to stop.
When she responded that getting the child to the US was their highest priority, the board asked whether the assumption that a child would be better off in the US rather than Afghanistan was a product of Western bias.
“They have a survival mentality,” she said of Afghans. “We believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And we wanted her to have that.”
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