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Angelina Jolie adopted Ethiopian orphan

Addis Ababa / AFP
07/08/2005

Mahmoud Tawil/AFP/Getty Images

Hollywood seductress Angelina Jolie flew into Ethiopia on Wednesday to pick up an orphaned Ethiopian infant she has adopted to join her family along with a three-year-old Cambodian son, officials said.

Jolie and her rumoured paramour, heartthrob Brad Pitt, arrived in the Ethiopian capital after the actress secured the necessary approval to adopt the baby girl last week, an official involved in the process said.

"They are here, they arrived today," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "Angelina has come to collect the baby."

The official could not say exactly when Jolie and Pitt would collect the child or when they might leave Ethiopia but earlier, two officials confirmed that the adoption had been approved by Ethiopian authorities.

Dr Bulti Gutema, the chief of the children and family affairs department at Ethiopia's social affairs ministry and Hadosh Halefom, an official with the adoption agency concerned, said Jolie had been accepted as an adoptive mother.

Both said Jolie had completed the necessary paperwork last week when she and Pitt, who travelled to Ethiopia in April to visit HIV/AIDS projects, visited Addis Ababa.

"We in the ministry had no idea who Angelina Jolie was when we granted the adoption permit," Bulti told AFP. "We only did our job based on the documents she presented."

Hadosh, who spoke on condition that the orphanage not be named, said Jolie would be able to pick up the infant, a less-than-one-year-old girl, at any time since approval for the adoption had been granted by an Ethiopian court.

"The most important requirements are economic stability and police checks," Hadosh said. "It is the same for everyone if you are well known or not."

The adoption was first reported late Tuesday by the online edition of the US celebrity magazine People which said the child was an AIDS orphan and quoted Jolie as saying she and son Maddox were "very happy to have a new addition to our family."

The 30-year-old Jolie told the magazine that her new daughter's name is Zahara Marley Jolie.

After a trip to Ethiopia earlier this year, Jolie said of Maddox: "My son is in love with Africa, so he has been asking for an African brother or sister," People reported.