- Mother of Marine killed in Kabul suicide blast says she started ‘shaking’ from rage when ‘heartless’ Biden com Daily Mail
- Biden administration lied to Gold Star family about Marine’s death in Afghanistan, mom says Fox News
- ‘Admit to your mistakes,’ fallen Marine’s father tells Biden Fox11online.com
- Gold Star Families demand answers for deaths of 13 servicememembers during Afghanistan withdrawal CBS News 8
- Gold Star mom claims Biden callously likened her son’s death during disastrous Afghan withdrawal to Beau’s New York Post
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: Kabul
Afghanistan’s female students voice devastation after being banned from universities
Kabul, Afghanistan
CNN
—
The 21-year-old student had been studying hard for weeks as she prepared for the final exams of her first year of university. She was almost done, with just two exams left, when she heard the news: the Taliban government was suspending university education for all female students in Afghanistan.
“I did not stop and kept studying for the exam,” she told CNN on Wednesday. “I went to the university in the morning anyway.”
But it was no use. She arrived to find armed Taliban guards at the gates of her campus in Kabul, the Afghan capital, turning away every female student who tried to enter.
“It was a terrible scene,” she said. “Most of the girls, including myself, were crying and asking them to let us go in … If you lose all your rights and you can’t do anything about it, how would you feel?”
CNN is not naming the student for safety reasons.
The Taliban’s decision on Tuesday was just the latest step in its brutal crackdown on the freedoms of Afghan women, following its takeover of the country in August 2021.
Though the insurgent group has repeatedly claimed that it would protect the rights of girls and women, it has in fact done the opposite, stripping away the hard-won freedoms they have fought tirelessly for over the last two decades.
Some of its most striking restrictions have been around education, with girls barred from returning to secondary schools in March. The move devastated many students and their families, who described to CNN their dashed dreams of becoming doctors, teachers or engineers.
To the Kabul student, the loss of her education was an even bigger shock than the bomb attacks and violence she has previously witnessed.
“I always thought that we could overcome our sorrow and fear by getting educated,” she said. “However, this (time) is different. It is just unacceptable and unbelievable.”
The news was met with widespread condemnation and dismay, with many world leaders – and prominent Afghan figures – urging the Taliban to reverse its decision.
In a statement on Twitter, former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani – who fled Kabul when the Taliban seized power – called the group illegitimate rulers holding “the entire population hostage.”
“The current problem of women’s education and work in the country is very serious, sad, and the most obvious and cruel example of gender apartheid in the 21st century,” Ghani wrote. “I have said it again and again that if one girl becomes literate, she changes five future generations, and if one girl remains illiterate, she causes the destruction of five future generations.”
He praised those in Afghanistan protesting the Taliban’s decision, calling them “pioneers.”
Another former Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, also expressed “deep regret” over the suspension. The country’s “development, population, and self-sufficiency depend on the education and training of every child, girl, and boy of this land,” he wrote.
Other foreign officials and leaders issued similar statements, including the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price, and US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karen Decker.
The foreign ministries of France, Germany, Pakistan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia criticized the decision as well.
“Preventing half of the population from contributing meaningfully to society and the economy will have a devastating impact on the whole country,” said the UN mission in Afghanistan in a statement.
“Education is a basic human right,” it added. “Excluding women and girls from secondary and tertiary education not only denies them this right, it denies Afghan society as a whole the benefit of the contributions that women and girls have to offer. It denies all of Afghanistan a future.”
Female students in Afghanistan say their futures now lie in limbo, with no clarity on what will become of their education.
“I am still hopeful that things would get back to normal, but I don’t know how long it will take,” said the Kabul student. “Now many girls, including me, are just thinking (about) what is next, what can we do to get out of this situation.”
“I am not quitting,” she added, saying she would consider going “somewhere else” if Afghanistan continued banning female students.
Another 21-year-old, Maryam, is intimately familiar with the dangers of pursuing education as a woman. As a high school student, she’d been in the vicinity of an attack on Kabul University several years ago, and remembers being evacuated “while bullets were flying over our heads.”
Then in September, she barely survived a suicide attack at the Kaaj education center in Kabul, which killed at least 25 people, most of whom are believed to be young women. The attack sparked public outrage and horror, with dozens of women taking to the streets of Kabul afterward in protest.
Maryam, who is being identified by one name for her security, missed the blast by just seconds. When she ran back into her classroom, she was met with the scattered bodies of her friends.
Each brush with death cemented her determination not only to pursue her own ambitions – but the “dreams of all those best friends of mine who died before my eyes,” she said.
Though she was accepted into a bachelors program weeks after the September bombing, she decided to defer her university plans for a year, instead returning to rebuild the destroyed education center from scratch. She wanted to encourage other girls to continue their educations, she said.
Now, those dreams have been shattered by Tuesday’s announcement.
“I am just lost. I don’t know what to do and what to say,” she told CNN. “Since last night, I have been imagining every friend of mine who lost their lives in the Kaaj attack. What was their sacrifice for?”
“We need to get education; we have given a lot of sacrifice for it. It is our only hope for a better future.”
Kabul hotel attack ends as three gunmen killed; two foreigners injured
KABUL, Dec 12 (Reuters) – Armed men opened fire on Monday inside a hotel in central Kabul popular with Chinese nationals in an attack that ended when at least three gunmen were killed by security forces, the Taliban-run administration said.
Two foreigners were injured while trying to escape by jumping from the hotel balcony, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on Twitter.
Kabul’s Emergency Hospital, run by an Italian non-profit near the attacked hotel in the Shahr-e-Naw area, reported receiving 21 casualties – 18 injured and three dead on arrival.
Taliban sources said the attack was carried out at Longan Hotel where Chinese and other foreigners usually stay.
Videos posted on Twitter by a journalist in Kabul and verified by Reuters showed smoke billowing out of one of the floors amid sounds of gunshots, while a person was seen trying to escape the attack by jumping out of a hotel window.
[1/3] View of a hotel fire in Shahr-e-Naw neighborhood where gunfire was also heard in Kabul, Afghanistan December 12, 2022 in this still image from social media video obtained by REUTERS
Kabul police spokesman Khalid Zadran said the attack took place around 2.30 p.m. local time, with residents in the area saying they heard a powerful explosion followed by gunfire.
The attack came a day after China’s ambassador met the Afghan deputy foreign minister to discuss security-related matters and sought more attention on the protection of its embassy.
China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said the attack happened near a Chinese guesthouse and its embassy in Kabul was closely monitoring the situation.
The embassy did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Several bombings have taken place in Afghanistan in recent months, including an attack on the Pakistan embassy earlier this month and a suicide blast near the Russian embassy in September. Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic State.
The Taliban, which seized power after U.S.-led foreign forces withdrew in August 2021, have said they are focused on securing the country.
Reporting by Kabul newsroom and Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar; Writing by Shivam Patel in New Delhi; Editing by Miral Fahmy, William Maclean and Arun Koyyur
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Afghan couple accuse US Marine of abducting their baby
By JULIET LINDERMAN, CLAIRE GALOFARO and MARTHA MENDOZA
The young Afghan couple raced to the airport in Kabul, clutching their baby girl close amid the chaotic withdrawal of American troops last year.
The baby had been rescued two years earlier from the rubble of a U.S. Special Forces 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 lawsuit they 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 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 Joshua 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.
Five days after the Afghans arrived in the U.S., they say Mast – custody papers in hand – took her away.
The Afghan woman collapsed onto the floor and pleaded with the Marine to give her baby back. Her husband said Mast had called him “brother” for months; so he begged him to act like one, with compassion. Instead, the Afghan family claims in court papers, Mast shoved the man and stomped his foot.
That was more than a year ago. The Afghan couple hasn’t seen her since.
“After they took her, our tears never stop,” the woman told The Associated Press. “Right now, we are just dead bodies. Our hearts are broken. We have no plans for a future without her. Food has no taste and sleep gives us no rest.”
__
PULLED FROM THE RUBBLE
The story of the baby unfolds in hundreds of pages of legal filings and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, as well as interviews with those involved, pieced together in an AP investigation.
In a federal lawsuit filed in September, the Afghan family accuses the Masts of false imprisonment, conspiracy, fraud and assault. The family has asked the court to shield their identity out of concerns for their relatives back in Afghanistan, and they communicated with AP on the condition of remaining anonymous.
The Masts call the Afghan family’s claims “outrageous, unmerited attacks” on their integrity. They argue in court filings that they have worked “to protect the child from physical, mental or emotional harm.” They say the Afghan couple are “not her lawful parents,” and Mast’s attorney cast doubt on whether the Afghans were even related to the baby.
“Joshua and Stephanie Mast have done nothing but ensure she receives the medical care she requires, at great personal expense and sacrifice, and provide her a loving home,” wrote the Masts’ attorneys.
The baby’s identity has been kept private, listed only as Baby L or Baby Doe. The Afghan couple had given the baby an Afghan name; the Masts gave her an American one.
Originally from Florida, Joshua Mast married his wife Stephanie and attended Liberty University, an evangelical Christian college in Lynchburg, Virginia. He graduated in 2008, and got his law degree there in 2014.
In 2019, they were living with their sons in Palmyra, a small rural Virginia town, when Joshua Mast was sent on a temporary assignment to Afghanistan. Mast, then a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, was a military lawyer for the federal Center for Law and Military Operations. The U.S. Marines declined to comment publicly, along with other federal officials.
That September in 2019 was one of the deadliest months of the entire U.S. occupation in Afghanistan, with more than 110 civilians killed in the first week alone.
On Sept. 6, 2019, the U.S. attacked a remote compound.
No details about this event 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.
Sehla Ashai and Maya Eckstein, attorneys for the Afghan couple, dispute Mast’s account. They say the baby’s parents were actually farmers, unaffiliated with any terrorist group. And they described the event as a tragedy that left two innocent civilians and five of their children dead.
Both sides agree that when the dust settled, U.S. troops pulled the badly injured infant from the rubble. The baby had a fractured skull, broken leg and serious burns.
She was about 2 months old.
Mast called the baby a “victim of terrorism.” His attorney said she “miraculously survived.”
__
“DO THE RIGHT THING”
The baby was rushed to a military hospital, where she was placed in the care of the Defense Department.
The International Committee of the Red Cross told AP that they began searching for her family with the Afghan government, often a plodding process in rural parts of the country where record-keeping is scant. At first, they didn’t even know the baby’s name.
Meanwhile, Mast said, he was “aggressively” advocating to get her to the U.S. Over several months, he wrote to then-Vice President Mike Pence’s office, according to exhibits filed in court. He said his colleagues in the military tried to talk to 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 “to be treated in a safe environment.”
The Masts were represented by Joshua’s brother Richard Mast, an attorney with the conservative Christian legal group Liberty Counsel, which says it is not involved in this case. None of the Masts responded to repeated requests for interviews.
In emails to military officials, Mast alleged that Pence told the U.S. Embassy in Kabul to “make every effort” to get her to the United States. Mast signed his emails with a Bible verse: “’Live for an Audience of one, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.”
Pence’s spokesman, Marc Short, did not respond to requests for comment.
The U.S. Embassy never heard from Pence’s office, said a Department of State official, who requested anonymity because they did not have permission to speak publicly about the situation. But they did begin getting highly unusual inquiries about the possibility of sending the baby to the U.S. The diplomats were rattled by the suggestion that the U.S. could just take her away; they believed the baby belonged to Afghanistan.
“I was aware that it may not be smooth sailing ahead, but that just made me more determined to do the right thing,” the State Department official said.
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. The State Department wanted to make sure everyone understood its position: Under international humanitarian law, the U.S. was obliged to do everything possible to reunite the baby with her next of kin.
At the meeting, Mast asked about adoption, the State Department official said. Attendees from Afghanistan’s Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs explained that by Afghan law and custom, they had to place the baby with her biological family. If that did not work, the Afghan Children’s Court would determine a proper guardian.
The American concept of adoption doesn’t even exist in Afghanistan. Under Islamic law, a child’s bloodline cannot be severed and their heritage is sacred. Instead of adoption, a guardianship system called kafala allows Muslims to take in orphans and raise them as family, without relinquishing the child’s name or bloodline.
American adoptions from Afghanistan are rare and only possible for Muslim-American families of Afghan descent. The State Department recognizes 14 American adoptions from Afghanistan over the past decade, none in the past two years.
Yet two days after the embassy meeting, a letter was sent to U.S. officials in Kabul from Kimberley Motley, a near-celebrity American attorney in Afghanistan, the State Department official said. Motley wrote that she was representing an unnamed concerned American citizen who wished to adopt this baby. Motley declined to be interviewed by the AP.
Mast also continued his appeals to American politicians. The U.S. Embassy began hearing from Congressional staffers about the baby, and diplomats met with a military general, the official said.
The general in turn put a “gag order” on military personnel about the baby and said “no one was to advocate on her behalf,” Mast wrote in a legal filing.
But he wasn’t ready to give up.
___
HALFWAY AROUND THE WORLD
The Masts searched for a solution halfway around the world — in rural Fluvanna County, Virginia, where they lived.
They petitioned the local Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, describing the baby as a “stateless minor recovered off the battlefield.” In early November 2019, a judge granted them legal custody. The name of this judge is not publicly available because juvenile records are sealed in Virginia.
A few days later, a certificate of foreign birth listed Joshua and Stephanie Mast as parents.
The custody order was based on the Masts’ assertion that the Afghan government — specifically now-deposed President Ashraf Ghani — intended to waive jurisdiction over the child “in a matter of days,” according to a hearing transcript. The waiver never arrived.
In an email to AP, Ghani’s former deputy chief of staff Suhrob Ahmad said there is “no record of this alleged statement of waiver of Afghan jurisdiction.” Ahmad said he and the head of the Administrative Office of the President do not remember any such request going through the court system as required.
The U.S. Embassy heard that Mast was granted custody. Military lawyers assured them that the Marine was just preparing in case Afghanistan waived jurisdiction, but would not interfere with the search for the baby’s family, according to the State Department official.
Yet all along they planned to adopt the baby, according to records obtained from the state of Virginia under a Freedom of Information Act request. Richard Mast wrote the Attorney General’s office in November 2019 that the Masts “will file for adoption as soon as statutorily possible.”
In the meantime, Joshua Mast enrolled the baby in the Defense Department health care system, made an appointment at a U.S. International Adoption Clinic and asked to have her evacuated.
Then came a surprise: The Red Cross said they’d found her family. She was about five months old.
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. They were young, educated newlyweds with no children yet of their own, and lived in a city with access to hospitals.
The young man worked in a medical office and ran a co-ed school, which is unusual in Afghanistan. His wife graduated from high school at the top of her class, and is fluent in three languages, including English. They had married for love, unlike many Afghans in arranged marriages.
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.” He asked the Red Cross to put him in touch, but they refused.
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.” Mast believed she was the daughter of transient terrorists who are citizens of no country, his attorney said. 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.
But Afghanistan did not waver: the child was a citizen of their country.
Mast’s attorney sent the U.S. Embassy a “cease and desist” letter warning them not to hand the baby over, according to the State Department official. But on February 26, 2020, the Masts learned that the U.S. was preparing to put the baby, now nearly 8 months old, on a plane early the following morning to join her family in another Afghan city.
The Masts, represented by Richard Mast, sued the secretaries of Defense and State in a federal court in Virginia, asking for an emergency restraining order to stop them. The Masts claimed they were the baby’s “lawful permanent legal guardians.”
Within hours, four federal attorneys — two from the Justice Department and two from the U.S. Attorney’s Office — were on the phone, and Richard Mast was in Federal Judge Norman Moon’s office.
Richard Mast said the baby should not be “condemned to suffer.” He complained that the Afghan government had not conducted DNA testing to confirm the family they found was truly related to the child.
But the Justice Department attorneys said they had no right to mandate how the Afghan government vets the family, and that the Red Cross — which has reunited relatives in war zones for more than a century — had confirmed it was done properly. Further, the federal government’s attorneys described the Masts’ custody documents from state court as “unlawful,” “deeply flawed and incorrect,” and “issued on a false premise that has never happened” — that Afghanistan would waive jurisdiction.
Judge Moon asked Richard Mast: “Your client is not asking to adopt the child?”
“No sir,” Mast responded. “He wants to get her medical treatment in the United States.”
Justice Department attorneys argued that the United States must meet its international obligations. Attorney Alexander Haas put it simply: Taking another country’s citizen to the United States “would have potentially profound implications on our military and foreign affairs interests.”
Judge Moon ruled against the Masts, and the baby stayed in Afghanistan.
The next day, she was united with her biological family. The Afghan couple wept with joy.
“We didn’t think she would come back to her family alive,” said the young Afghan man. “It was the best day of our lives. After a long time, she had a chance to have a family again.”
___
AN EXTRA MEASURE OF TENDERNESS
As the months passed in her new home in Afghanistan, the girl loved getting henna painted on her hands and dressing up in new clothes, the Afghan couple said. She always wanted to do her new mother’s makeup, or brush her hair.
“She knew about Allah, about clothes, about the names of food,” the woman wrote.
The couple cared for her as if she was their own daughter, but with an extra measure of tenderness because of the unimaginable tragedy she’d already suffered.
“We never wanted her to feel she couldn’t have something she wanted,” said the young man.
Meanwhile, Mast continued to worry that the child was “in an objectively dangerous situation,” Richard Mast wrote in court documents. The Masts asked Kimberley Motley, the attorney, to track down the family, saying he wanted to get the child medical treatment in the U.S, Motley said in court records.
Motley contacted the Afghan family in March 2020, about a week after the baby was placed in her new home. Motley is named as a defendant in their lawsuit, but her attorney, Michael Hoernlein, told AP the claims against her are “meritless.” In court documents, Motley’s attorneys describe her role as professional and above-board, and asked that the claims against her be dismissed.
Motley had originally gone to Afghanistan in 2008 under an American-funded initiative to train local lawyers. She stayed, largely representing foreigners charged with crimes. She took on high-profile human rights cases, gave a TED Talk and wrote a book.
Over the course of a year, Motley called for updates about the child and occasionally asked for photos. In July, around the baby’s first birthday, the couple sent Motley a snapshot of the child in swim trunks, smiling and splashing in a wading pool.
At the same time, the Masts’ adoption case was still winding through the court system in Fluvanna County, Virginia. 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,” according to a federal lawsuit. Fluvanna County Circuit Court Presiding Judge Richard E. Moore did not respond to repeated requests for clarity on how the cases progressed.
International adoption lawyers were baffled.
“If you have relatives there who are saying, ‘no, no, no, we want our daughter, we want our little girl,’ it’s over,” said Irene Steffas, an adoption and immigration attorney. “There is no way the U.S. is going to get into a match with another country when it comes to a child that’s a citizen of that country.”
Karen Law, a Virginia attorney who specializes in international adoption, said state law requires an accredited agency to visit three times over six months and compile a report before an adoption can be finalized. The child must be present for the visits — but this baby was thousands of miles away.
On July 10, 2021, around the baby’s second birthday, Motley facilitated the first phone call between the Afghan couple and Joshua Mast, with the aid translator Ahmad Osmani, a Baptist pastor of Afghan descent. Mast told the Afghan couple that unless they sent the child to the United States for medical care, she could “be blind, brain damaged, and/or permanently physically disabled.”
But the Afghan man now raising her, who had worked in the medical field, did not think her burn scars, a leg injury and mysterious allergic reactions amounted to a life-altering condition in the way Mast described. The couple declined sending the baby to the United States.
The woman was pregnant, and worried about the risk of such a long flight. They said they asked Mast: Could they take the baby to Pakistan or India for treatment instead?
The answer was no, their lawsuit says. The conversations continued for months. Osmani, the translator, vouched for the Masts and described them as kind and trustworthy, according to the lawsuit, which names him as a defendant.
Osmani did not respond to requests for comment. He asked a federal judge to throw out the lawsuit, and said he never deceived anyone. He was only a “mere translator.”
His attorneys wrote: “No good deed goes unpunished.”
__
“LIVING IN A DARK JAIL”
In late summer 2021, the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan. Mast said he contacted the family to bring the baby to the U.S. “before the country collapsed.” He said he was “extremely concerned that they may not get another chance.” The couple agreed.
Mast applied for special visas for the Afghan family and for relatives of Osmani, the translator, according to court records. They characterized the Afghan couple as an escort for a “U.S. military dependent” — the baby.
In an email to U.S. officials filed in court, Mast wrote that Osmani was “very instrumental to helping a U.S. Marine…adopt an Afghan child.”
Soon, the Afghan family began their days-long journey to the U.S. Joshua Mast told them to say he was their lawyer.
“If anyone asks to talk about your documents, show them this text: I am Major Joshua Mast, USMC. I am a Judge Advocate…” Mast texted them detailed directions for how to deal with U.S. authorities, their lawsuit says.
When the family arrived in Germany for a stopover, Joshua Mast and his wife greeted them at the air force base. It was the first time they had met in person.
In Germany, the Masts visited the Afghan family’s room three times to try to get the baby to travel separately with them, “insisting that it would be easier for the toddler to enter the United States that way,” the Afghan couple recalled in their lawsuit. They refused to let the girl out of their sight.
When the Afghans finally landed in the United States, they began explaining that the child was too young to have Afghan documents. That’s when they claim Joshua Mast pulled out an Afghan passport.
Inside was the same photo of the child in the wading pool, but altered to change the background, add a shirt and smooth her hair. Mast told the Afghans to “keep quiet” about having his name on her passport, their lawsuit alleges, so it would be easier to get medical care.
The Afghan couple asked to be taken to Fort Pickett Army National Guard base, a location specified by Mast, according to the lawsuit. Thousands of Afghan refugees were temporarily housed there.
Soon after, they said, soldiers came to their room and told them they were moving. A strange woman sat in the back of the van next to a car seat, according to court records, and the baby fussed as she buckled her in.
The van pulled up to a building they didn’t recognize, where a woman who called herself a social worker said the Masts were the girl’s legal guardians. Confused and frightened, the child cried and the couple begged.
But it did no good. Mast took the baby to his car, where his wife was waiting, the lawsuit says.
They had lost her.
In their heavily redacted response to the lawsuit, the Masts acknowledge they “took custody” of the child; they said their adoption order was valid and they did nothing wrong.
Richard Mast is also named as a defendant in the Afghan family’s lawsuit. He wrote in legal documents that his brother’s adoption of the child was “selfless;” it saved both the child, and the Afghan family fighting to get her back, “from the evils of life under the Taliban.”
The Afghan couple believed that their baby was stolen, and they immediately sought help at Fort Pickett to get her back.
“But the playing field was not level,” their attorney, Ashai, told the AP. The couple “were forced to navigate a complex and confusing system in a foreign country in which they had just arrived, after having survived the greatest trauma of their lives.”
Meanwhile, the couple says in court documents, Osmani warned them not to contact a lawyer or the authorities, and suggested that Mast might give them the baby back if they dealt directly with him.
And so they tried to maintain contact with Mast. They were also scared of him. If he could abduct their child in broad daylight, they worried he might hurt them too, their lawyers wrote in legal filings.
The Afghan woman plunged into a deep depression and, despite being nine months pregnant, stopped eating and drinking. She could not sleep. Her husband was afraid to leave her alone.
“Since we have come to America, we have not felt happiness for even one day,” the Afghan man told the AP. “We feel like we are living in a dark jail.”
His wife gave birth to a girl on October 1, 2021. The young mother’s grief became overwhelming. A month later, she considered suicide and was hospitalized.
Soon the couple sought legal help; by December 2021, the Afghan couple had asked the Fluvanna judge to reverse the adoption. But those proceedings, almost one year in, have been opaque and slow.
On Feb. 27, 2022, when the Afghan baby was 2 ½ years old, the Masts traveled to the Mennonite Christian Assembly in Fredericksburg, Ohio, to share their joy during a special church service. In a video advertising the event called “Walking in Faith,” the pastor apologized to congregants that it would not be online, because the Marine would share “very confidential, classified information.”
“Unforeseen events gave the couple an unexpected opportunity to stand up to protect innocent life,” read the program flyer. “Come hear how God’s mighty hand allowed for a remarkable deliverance.”
Pastor John Risner told the AP that the Masts had requested the service be confidential, and he didn’t want to betray their trust by disclosing any details.
All he would say is that their story is “amazing.”
__
NO HAPPINESS HERE
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.
Earlier this month, Joshua Mast arrived at the Fluvanna County courthouse along with his wife and his brother Richard. Mast was dressed in his starched Marine uniform, holding his white and gold hat in his hand. The hearing stretched on for roughly eight hours.
The proceedings have been completely shielded from public view, mandated by presiding Judge Moore. The AP was not allowed inside the courtroom. Court clerk Tristana Treadway refused to provide even the docket number, saying she could “neither confirm nor deny” the case existed at all.
More than a dozen lawyers streamed into the courthouse, carting boxes of evidence, and each said they were forbidden from speaking.
Mast remains an active duty Marine, and has since been promoted to major. He now lives with his family in North Carolina. The Afghan toddler has been with them for more than a year.
In Texas, the Afghan couple continues to grieve the loss of the child. The baby the woman gave birth to shortly after arriving in the U.S. just turned 1. The young mother had planned to raise the girls as sisters.
But they’ve never met.
“There is nothing to celebrate without her. There is no happiness here,” the Afghan man said. “We are counting the moments and days until she will come home.”
___
Retired Associated Press Afghanistan and Pakistan Bureau Chief Kathy Gannon, AP researcher Rhonda Shafner and AP Pentagon reporter Lolita Baldor contributed to this report.
___
Follow the authors on Twitter @julietlinderman, @clairegalofaro, @mendozamartha
Two Russian embassy staff among six killed in Kabul suicide blast
Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement that “an unknown militant set off an explosive device. As a result of the attack, two employees of the diplomatic mission were killed.”
The foreign ministry added that “there are also victims among Afghan citizens” without giving further details.
“One of the employees of the embassy was an Afghan guard and we still do not know the nationality of the second person,” an Afghan security source told CNN. Another 10 people were injured in the blast. Russia’s Investigative Committee said that two staff killed were the embassy’s second secretary and a security guard.
Kabul’s police spokesman said that explosives went off in a crowd of people after an attacker was identified and shot by Afghan security forces near the Russian embassy.
“Today around 11 a.m. local time a suicide bomber, who was planning to blow up his explosives among the crowd of people, was identified and shot by the security forces near the Russian embassy in Police District 7, Kabul. As a result, his explosives went off,” police spokesman Khalid Zadran said on Twitter.
An ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan claimed credit for the attack in a statement on Monday.
CNN cannot independently verify the authenticity of this claim.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said additional Taliban forces had been brought in to secure the embassy in the Afghan capital.
“Two of our comrades have died. A set of measures were immediately taken to strengthen the protection of the outer perimeter,” Lavrov said during a meeting with Tajikistan’s foreign minister in Moscow. The “intelligence and counterintelligence services of Afghanistan are involved,” he added.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the attack as “unacceptable.”
“This was a terrorist attack, they are absolutely unacceptable. We strongly condemn such terrorist acts. Of course, now the main thing is to get information about what happened to our diplomats. As far as I understand, the information will be updated,” Peskov told a briefing Monday.
CNN’s Fred Pleitgen, Darya Tarasova and Hamdi Alkhshali contributed reporting.
Kabul: Deadly explosion hits mosque in Afghan capital, police say
Khalid Zadran, a spokesman for the Kabul police chief, told CNN the blast caused casualties, but did not specify further.
The incident occurred in the city’s police district 17 and security forces are on the scene investigating, he added.
Health care organization Emergency said that at least three people had died.
“Following today’s explosion, we admitted 27 patients to our Surgical Centre for War Victims in Kabul, including five minors, one of them a 7-year-old boy,” Stefano Sozza, Emergency’s Country Director in Afghanistan, told CNN.
“Two patients arrived dead, one died in the emergency room,” he said.
“In the month of August alone, we managed six mass casualties in our hospital, with a total of almost 80 patients. Throughout the year, we have continued to receive gunshot injuries, shrapnel injuries, stabbing injuries, and victims of mine and IED explosions on a daily basis. The country is suffering the consequences of a very long conflict that has undermined its future,” he added.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed there were dead and wounded civilians, but did not say how many. He tweeted that the Taliban government “strongly condemns” the explosion, and vowed the perpetrators of “such crimes will be caught and punished for their heinous deeds.”
Another Taliban deputy spokesperson, Bilal Karimi, condemned the explosion in a tweet on Wednesday evening.
“The murderers of civilians and perpetrators of similar crimes will soon be caught and punished for their actions, God willing,” Karimi wrote.
CNN’s Brent Swails and Jonny Hallam contributed reporting.
Many feared dead, including prominent cleric, after bombing at mosque in Kabul
A bombing at a mosque in the Afghan capital of Kabul during evening prayers on Wednesday killed at least 10 people, including a prominent cleric, an eyewitness and police said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, the latest to strike the country in the year since the Taliban seized power.
The Islamic State group’s local affiliate has stepped up attacks targeting the Taliban and civilians since the former insurgents’ takeover last August as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final stages of their withdrawal from the country. Last week, the IS claimed responsibility for killing a prominent Taliban cleric at his religious center in Kabul.
According to the eyewitness, a resident of the city’s Kher Khanna neighborhood where the Siddiquiya Mosque was targeted, the explosion was carried out by a suicide bomber. The slain cleric was Mullah Amir Mohammad Kabuli, the eyewitness said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
He added that more than 30 other people were wounded. The Italian Emergency hospital in Kabul said that at least 27 wounded civilians, including five children, were brought there from the site of the bomb blast.
Khalid Zadran, the Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Kabul police chief, confirmed an explosion inside a mosque in northern Kabul but would not provide a casualty toll or a breakdown of the dead and wounded.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid also condemned the explosion and vowed that the “perpetrators of such crimes will soon be brought to justice and will be punished.”
A U.S.-led invasion toppled the previous Taliban government, which had hosted al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.
Since regaining power, the former insurgents have faced a crippling economic crisis as the international community, which does not recognize the Taliban government, froze funding to the country.
Separately, the Taliban confirmed on Wednesday that they had captured and killed Mehdi Mujahid in western Herat province as he was trying to cross the border into Iran.
Mujahid was a former Taliban commander in the district of Balkhab in northern Sar-e-Pul province, and the only member of the minority Shiite Hazara community among the Taliban ranks.
Mujahid had turned against the Taliban over the past year, after opposing decisions made by Taliban leaders in Kabul.
Kabul: Explosion hits mosque in Afghan capital, police say
Khalid Zadran, a spokesman for the Kabul police chief, told CNN that the blast did cause casualties, but did not specify further.
The incident occurred in the city’s police district 17 and security forces are on the scene investigating, he added.
Healthcare organization Emergency later confirmed that at least three people had died.
“Following today’s explosion, we admitted 27 patients to our Surgical Centre for War Victims in Kabul, including five minors, one of them a seven-year-old boy,” Stefano Sozza, Emergency’s Country Director in Afghanistan, told CNN.
“Two patients arrived dead, one died in the emergency room,” he said.
“In the month of August alone, we managed six mass casualties in our hospital, with a total of almost 80 patients. Throughout the year, we have continued to receive gunshot injuries, shrapnel injuries, stabbing injuries, and victims of mine and IED explosions on a daily basis. The country is suffering the consequences of a very long conflict that has undermined its future,” he added.
Bilal Karimi, the Taliban’s deputy spokesman, condemned the explosion in a tweet on Wednesday evening.
“The murderers of civilians and perpetrators of similar crimes will soon be caught and punished for their actions, God willing,” Karimi wrote.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Bomb blast in Kabul kills eight, injures more than 20
KABUL, Aug 6 (Reuters) – A bomb blast in a busy shopping street in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul on Saturday killed at least eight people and injured 22, hospital officials and witnesses said.
The bomb exploded in a western district of the city where members of the minority Shi’ite Muslim community regularly meet. Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack, the group said on its Telegram channel.
A senior medical officer at a private hospital said at least eight people died and 22 were wounded.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
An Interior Ministry spokesman said an investigation team was at the blast site to help the wounded and assess casualties.
Video footage posted online showed ambulances rushing to the scene, which is also near bus stations.
The attack came ahead of Ashura, a commemoration of the martyrdom of Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, which is marked mainly by Shi’ite Muslims.
On Friday, at least eight people were killed and 18 injured in a blast in Kabul carried out by Islamic State. read more
Islamic State does not control any territory in Afghanistan but it has sleeper cells that have been attacking religious minorities in the country as well as patrols by the ruling Taliban.
The Sunni Muslim Taliban authorities, who took over Afghanistan in August last year after a two-decade insurgency, have said they will provide more protection for Shi’ite mosques and other facilities.
Sayed Kazum Hojat, a Shi’ite religious scholar in Kabul, said the Taliban government had ramped up security ahead of Ashura but should improve vigilance.
No up-to-date census data exists, but estimates put the size of the Shi’ite community at between 10-20% of the population of 39 million, including Persian-speaking Tajiks and Pashtuns as well as Hazaras.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
Reporting by Kabul newsroom
Editing by Andrew Heavens, Mark Heinrich and Frances Kerry
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Al Qaeda leader Al-Zawahiri dead after drone strike on home in Kabul
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed at the home of an FBI-wanted Taliban lackey who was once given a platform by the New York Times.
The jihadist, one of the planners of the Sept. 11 attacks, was taken out by a CIA-issued drone strike Sunday morning at a Kabul home belonging to senior Taliban official Sirajuddin Haqqani, according to initial reporting by Gray Lady herself.
The publication infamously published an op-ed penned by Haqqani — the leader of the insurgent Haqqani Network in Afghanistan linked to brutal and deadly attacks — to ask for a peace agreement between US and Afghan leaders in 2020.
The paper was slammed by critics and even its own reporters for giving the global terrorist a microphone to thousands of readers to spew what many saw as thinly-veiled propaganda. The Times defended its decision to publish the piece at the time.
Now the Times is being accused of “stealth-editing” their reporting on the killing of al-Zawahri to remove details of the initial report specifically naming Haqqani.
“According to one American analyst, the house that was struck was owned by a top aide to Sirajuddin Haqqani, a senior official in the Taliban government whom American officials say is close to senior Qaeda figures,” the Times wrote in his initial reporting.
However, that paper axed that paragraph without an editor’s note and later replaced it with language that failed to name Haqqani specifically, as first pointed out by Pluribus editor Jeryl Bier.
“After the strike, members of the Haqqani network, a terrorist group that is part of the Taliban government, tried to conceal that Mr. Zawahri had been at the house and restrict access to the site, according to a senior administration official. But the official said the United States had multiple intelligence threads confirming that Mr. Zawahri was killed in the strike,” the Times wrote in the updated story.
Critics of the newspaper suggested the publication removed the initial paragraph linking Haqqani’s role in protecting al-Zawahri due to the backlash it received for publishing the Taliban leader’s op-ed.
However, a Times spokesperson denied such a narrative in a statement to Fox News.
“We regularly edit web stories—especially breaking news stories—to refine the story, add new information, additional context or analysis,” the spokesperson told Fox.
In this case, we updated a complex piece of breaking international news with additional detail from open press briefings. There is absolutely no connection between the editing of this news item and any previous publication by Times Opinion.”
Haqqani, deputy leader of the Taliban, is on the FBI’s most wanted list for his alleged involvement in a January 2008 attack on a Kabul hotel that killed six people, including an American citizen. He is also believed to have coordinated and participated in cross-border attacks against the United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan, according to the agency.
The FBI is offering up to a whopping $10 million for information leading directly to his arrest.