Ethiopian adoption agency backs Angelina Jolie

Ethiopian adoption agency backs Angelina Jolie

Thu 15 Nov 2007, 15:09 GMT

[-] Text [+]

ADDIS ABABA, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Angelina Jolie's adoption of an

Ethiopian baby was legal, the agency involved said on Thursday,

rejecting reports that the child's relatives want her back.

Newspapers have reported this week that relatives of two-year-old

Zahara, including a woman who says she is her birth mother, want the

child returned to Ethiopia. Jolie adopted Zahara in July, 2005.

"The court in Addis Ababa approved the adoption after studying the

document her grandmother wrote ... saying her daughter, the mother of

Zahara, had died and she was too poor to bring her up," Tsegaye Berhe,

the head of Wide Horizons for Children, which conducted the adoption,

told Reuters.

"The grandmother brought three witnesses to court who testified that

Zahara's mother had died and that her father was unknown ... The court

also investigated the social status of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt

before approving the adoption."

Tsegaye said the adoption was "legal and irrevocable", and he blamed

reporters who he said had paid the relatives to raise the dispute.

"The controversy is media hype by unethical journalists exploiting the

poverty of the grandmother," he said. (Reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse;

Editing by Daniel Wallis and Michael Winfrey)