A US court sided Thursday with a Marine and his wife in their controversial adoption of a baby they returned from Afghanistan, despite a legal challenge from the girl's alleged relatives.In 2020, Joshua and Stephanie Mast were granted an adoption of a severely wounded orphan who was discovered a year earlier by the US military on the battlefield in Afghanistan.
Two years later, a couple claiming to be related to the child filed a petition to overturn the adoption, believing Afghan law gave them custody of the baby.
But a majority of Virginia Supreme Court judges signed onto an opinion Thursday preventing any legal challenge to the adoption, overturning initial judgements that it was void.
The judges said Virginia law allowed custody to be cemented six months after an adoption order.
That law states that in that time after an adoption order "the validity thereof shall not be subject to attack in any proceedings... for any reason," according to the court's opinion.
The ruling said the child's parents died in a US special forces "operation against Al Qaeda terrorists."
The baby was first taken to a military field hospital in Kandahar and then to Bagram Air Base for treatment of her injuries.
Mast, the US Marine, decided the child "would benefit from medical care in the United States" and filed a petition for her custody, the court said in Thursday's ruling.
The Masts in their earlier adoption petition said the child's adoption was an emergency situation and believed she had "no known living relatives."
The Afghan couple -- one claiming to be the girl's uncle -- sued the Masts, alleging they should have custody and that the American couple took the baby from them.
Thursday's ruling, however, argued the Afghan couple had resisted giving DNA evidence and had not sufficiently proved "that they had legal custody" of the girl under Afghan law.
The adoption of the baby also contravened the State Department's position holding that, under international law, Washington had to do all it could to try and reunite the baby with her relatives, according to media reports.
US president George W. Bush authorized the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 in response to the 9/11 attacks masterminded by Al-Qaeda, eventually toppling the country's Taliban leaders.
Afghanistan's Taliban authorities retook control of the country in 2021 after years of war with a US-backed government in Kabul.
