In September 2019, a weeks-old baby girl was found badly hurt but -- miraculously -- alive in the rubble of a raid by U.S. special operations forces. The military had targeted a home in central Afghanistan, looking to capture or kill suspected foreign fighters associated with al-Qaida.

The baby was left orphaned. Both of her parents were killed in the operation and she was placed under the temporary medical care of the U.S. military to recover from burns and physical trauma.

Today, the 3-and-a-half year old, known as Baby Doe, is an orphan no longer. She is claimed by two families who are fighting a complex legal battle over the right to raise her.

On one side are her paternal uncle and cousins in Afghanistan, with whom she was placed by the Afghan government in early 2020. Her uncle's son and his wife, referred to in court as John and Jane Doe, cared for her for 18 months.

On the other side is a U.S. Marine lawyer who was in Afghanistan at the time of the raid and who successfully petitioned a local Virginia court to grant him an adoption order. An attorney for the Marine, Maj. Joshua Mast, has contended in court filings that the girl had no surviving biological relatives, which the U.S. government says isn't true.

Sirianna Arathi was left out of an important family meeting, one where a couple of her friends, their parents and partners decided she was part of their family – even though she isn't blood related.

"I feel so confident in just being like 'this is my family, these are my sisters, this is my older sister, this is my older brother,'" says Arathi, who takes pride in "owning that kind of chosen family identity without having to put that label of chosen family."

Arathi is originally from south India, but was adopted by a white family in the United States as a child.

She says her adoptive family expected her to be grateful for being "saved" and tried to control her by overmedicating her. She also said another family member abused her.

"I had this view of family that I should be not only completely loyal to the family that raised me, but that was it. That was family," she says.

On Tuesday, the Chilean lower house voted through a resolution regarding the thousands of suspected illegal adoptions from the country.

136 members voted for the resolution and only one member voted against.

The decision means that the left-wing president Gabriel Boric will establish a truth and reparations commission for internationally adopted and families of origin who have suffered from irregularities linked to adoptions from the 1950s until the turn of the millennium.

In a parliamentary inquiry from 2019, the Chilean lower house established that children had been stolen from their parents and adopted away to countries in the Western world – including to Sweden.

The investigation said that networks of social workers, judges, healthcare professionals and adoption agencies had acted in concert “with the aim of confiscating minors, especially if their mothers were in a vulnerable situation”.

PUNE: The state Woman and Child Development (WCD) department has reached out to Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) for information on at least 15 adoption cases cleared by district magistrates (DMs) on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Bombay high court on Tuesday had stayed the implementation of the September 2022 notification that authorised district magistrates to oversee and decide about adoption cases. It directed that henceforth only a single-judge high court bench can hear adoption matters.

“Nearly 10 to 15 cases were cleared in two days by the magistrates in the state when the high court stayed the notification. In these cases, the adoptee parents and children may face legal issues in future and hence we have sought directions from CARA,” a senior WCD official told TOI on Thursday.

Eight cases were cleared by the district magistrate from Nagpur followed by the others, the official from the WCD department said.

The interim order also restrained the Centre and the adoption group of Maharashtra State Women’s Council from transferring any pending cases to district magistrates.

Whistleblowerin sagt in Krichbaum-Prozess aus

Veröffentlicht: 12.01.2023

Region+ Aktualisiert: 12.01.2023 19:05 Uhr

Preisgekrönte Bilder des Festivals "Schömberger Fotoherbst" im Kulturhaus Osterfeld

Wetter am Wochenende: Es wird windig und nass

A Zambian court has granted bail to eight Croatian nationals charged with child trafficking

NDOLA, Zambia -- A magistrate in Zambia on Thursday granted bail to eight Croatian nationals charged with child trafficking.

Magistrate David Makalicha in Ndola, in the mineral-rich Copperbelt province, said the eight should each pay 20,000 Kwacha (about $1,000) bail and surrender their passports to the court.

The eight were named as Damir Magic, 44, Nadica Magic, 45, Zoran Subosic, 52, Azra Imamovic Subosic, 41, Ladislav Persic, 42, Aleksandra Persic, 40, Noah Kraljevic, 45, and Ivona Kraljevic, 46, when they first appeared in court on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty to charges of child trafficking.

They are defended by a legal aid lawyer, Kelvin Silwimba. In the charges brought before the court, the Croatians are accused of attempting to traffic four named children late last year into Zambia “for the purpose of exploitation.”

A court in Zambia has decided that eight Croatian nationals, arrested on suspicion of human trafficking and falsifying adoption papers in order to adopt children from the Republic of Congo, can be released after posting bail of one thousand dollars and handing over their passports.

The next hearing in the process for alleged human trafficking against the eight Croatian citizens, whose intentions Croatian Foreign Affairs Minister Gordan Grli? Radman assessed as noble, will be held in Zambia on January 23rd. The court had previously allowed them to be released from prison if they posted bail and travel documents. In addition, they will have to report to the police regularly. The eight Croatians, who have been detained for a month in Zambia’s third largest city, Ndola, appeared before a judge for the first time two days ago. They are accused of attempted human trafficking and the falsification of documents.

The four married couples were arrested at the beginning of December at the airport in Ndola on suspicion of human trafficking, specifically that their documents for the adoption of children from the Congo were falsified. Their lawyer Kelvin Silwimba filed a request two days ago to release the accused on bail, however, state prosecutor Francis Mulenga objected to this, arguing that there was clear flight risk. On Thursday, after the court heard from three witnesses, the court decided to release the eight suspects once they meet the required conditions.

An official of the Croatian embassy in South Africa, which also covers Zambia, visited the detained Croatians several times. He also tried to visit the children, who now have Croatian documents and have been transferred to local social welfare services, but his visit was prevented.

Currently there are eight couples in Croatia that are in the process of adopting children from Congo. Since 2012, 131 children from the Congo have been adopted in Croatia. Authorities say the adoption decisions will not be re-evaluated. The head of the Department for Child and Family Protection at the Family and Social Policy Ministry, Melita ?usek: "In question are children who are Croatian citizens, who have integrated into Croatian society, who are attending school in Croatia, know our language, know these people as their parents, and I truly don't see any sense in re-examining those decisions."

Pforzheim/Enz district. It was an intense interrogation: a former EU official who describes herself as a whistleblower sat on the witness stand in the Pforzheim district court for four hours. In the appeal process, a 50-year-old defendant from the Enzkreis district is accused of defamation. As the PZ reported, she is said to have described the Pforzheim city councilor Oana Krichbaum as a "child trafficker" in four Facebook posts.

The witness worked until 2005 in the Commission for EU enlargement and, according to her testimony, dealt with the issue of child protection in Romania. At that time, adoption agencies from Romania are said to have worked together with agencies from other EU countries to place children from Romania with parents abroad.

A system that the EU official did not seem to be comfortable with. "It was legal back then. But history shows us that not everything that was legal is always good," said the woman, who had traveled to Pforzheim from Belgium.

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Two adopted girls will travel to the US, a boy to be with new family in Italy

Thane: The new year has brought blessings in the form of legal parents for 16 orphaned children from Thane. At an informal event on Tuesday, Thane District Collector Ashok Shingare handed over the children to their new families. Among these were 11 girls, with two of them finding parents in the US. Of the five boys, one will relocate to Italy.

Mr Shingare said, “As per the order of the Children Welfare Committee, orphaned, abandoned and neglected children are admitted to the Children of the Word India Trust in Nerul and Janani Ashish Charitable Trust in Dombivli. Prospective parents have to register themselves on the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) website and make an application to the District Collector.

Mr Shingare said that according to the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, the Adoption Rules 2022 were framed. Also included in this are inter-relationship and step adoptions

The adoptions announced by Mr Shingare came before the Bombay Court stayed the amendment of the Act pertaining to transfer of jurisdiction to District Magistrates, who are officials of the rank of Collector. “As per the Act, the cases were heard to me,” he said during his speech.

A WITNESS has told the Ndola magistrate court that four couples who attempted to traffic four children from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had them checked into a guest house they were living in two days later.

Estelle Banda, a General Manager at Spree guest house in Ndola narrated to the court that the eight Croatians who were booked at the guest house did not have children when they booked, but that two days later, staff at the guest house found them all with African black children.

This is a matter in which eight people of Croatian descent are charged with suspected human trafficking and were arrested from Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe Airport with children aged between one-year-six months and three years old.

When the matter came up for trial before chief resident Magistrate Dominic Makalicha, Ms Banda told court that after the four couples checked, it was discovered that each had a black child.

She told court that the couples stayed at the lodge for five days and when going to the Airport, they each had an African black child.