Military board substantiates misconduct but declines to fire Marine who adopted Afghan orphan

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (AP) — A U.S. Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a yearslong legal battle 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.

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