ETHIOPIA: Mother of Jolie's adopted child denies ever challenging adoption

Mentewab Dawit, the biological mother of Angelina Jolie's adopted child Zahara, said she is happy with the adoption. The mother of an Ethiopian baby called Zahara, who was adopted by Angelina Jolie denied on Saturday (November 17) that she had ever challenged the adoption, and said she was happy her daughter had found a home with the Hollywood star. "Because she neither had anything to eat or drink nor did I, in order for me to breastfeed, she was very weak. I conceived her after I was rape at night when it was pitch dark and I couldn't identify the assailant and no one else witnessed it," said Mentewab Dawit, Zaharas's biological mother. In an interview in the southern city of Awasa, Mentewab Dawit rejected newspaper reports in the United States and Europe this week that she wanted two-year-old Zahara returned to Ethiopia. Her words had been twisted, she said, by journalists who had visited her and claimed to be working for the Oscar-winning actress. "I have never said my baby should be brought back, I was misquoted by the first reporters who came here a year ago claiming to be Angelina Jolie's representatives and these ones who were here a few days ago they said they were only journalists who were going to deliver my real story. They also took pictures of me," said Dawit. On Thursday, the Ethiopian agency that arranged the adoption said it was "legal and irrevocable" and that Zahara's grandmother had told an Addis Ababa court her daughter was dead. "I was never forced. The people who came by two days ago said that the others who were here a year ago were not good people. They said they would come back after doing their story and they never will. Now these people are saying Angelina has been sending money and is still sending money which we are not getting, but with the help of their newspapers, we would be able to get the money that she has been sending once she reads their paper with my story. And that's why I allowed them to take my pictures," she added. Speaking on Saturday Dawit said she ran away from her home five months after giving birth because she had no food for her baby. Asked what she would say if she was to meet her biological daughter, Dawit said: "Once she is grown I will explain to my daughter why I gave her up for adoption, and I would never entertain Zahara leaving Angelina because she is more of her mother than I am. She raised her." Her mother searched for her for months around Awasa, 270 km (170 miles) south of the capital, but eventually concluded that she must have died and put the baby girl up for adoption. "I want Angelina to know that she should not pay attention to these so called journalist's who are lying and she should send her own people to get the truth I would also like Angelina not abandon my daughter after hearing these lies," added Dawit. Jolie, who also works as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, adopted her in July 2005. She adopted a Cambodian refugee boy, Maddox, three years earlier. In Awasa, a joyful Dawit kissed a picture of the actress while saying, "Thank you Angelina."

ITN Source | November 18, 2007

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