Allyson Reneau, an Oklahoma mother of 11, has been told to stop taking credit for saving an all-girls Afghan robotics team that managed to flee the Taliban-controlled country. Digital Citizen Fund, the parent organization that oversees the robotics team, sent a formal cease-and-desist letter to the mother on Thursday, The Washington Post reports. 

The fund’s lawyer, Kim Motley, said Reneau is continuingly recycling old pictures with the Afghan Girls Robotics Team, many of whom are minors. Motley adds that Reneau's actions impact the safety of the girls and other members of the team who still remain in Afghanistan. 

“It is highly unfortunate that you would use such a tragically horrible situation for what appears to be your own personal gain,” the lawyer wrote.

The Oklahoma resident is a Harvard graduate with a master’s degree in international relations and U.S. space policy. She said she met the girls, ages 16 to 18, at a 2019 space exploration conference in Washington, D.C., and maintained contact with them.

In an interview with Today, which was conducted just days after the Taliban took over Afghanistan earlier this month, Reneau said she was unable to sleep because she worried about the safety of the girls amid the chaos.

"I remembered my former roommate in D.C. a couple of years ago was transferred to Qatar," the mother said. "She said she worked in the U.S. Embassy in Qatar. She was sure her boss would approve helping the girls."

Multiple news outlets reported that Reneau flew to Qatar to facilitate the rescue. According to The Washington Post, however, the Harvard graduate said she never "represented that she went to Qatar."

Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Ibrahim AlHashmi said Qatar coordinated the evacuation directly with representatives of the Digital Citizen Fund. According to the representative, a Qatari diplomat first spoke with Roya Mahboob, founder of the Digital Citizen Fund, on Aug. 13 and planned the rescue effort. 

AlHashmi said the girls then met with Qatar's ambassador to Afghanistan “in a secure location" and they were "escorted safely to the airport, where they were evacuated to Doha in a plane arranged by Qatar’s armed forces.”

The spokesman adds that the Qatari government never worked with Reneau.

“She took the agency from the girls and she claimed credit,” AlHashmi said. “The media let her be a white savior, claiming the girls were saved by her. They came to global attention because of their work, so it should be about them and their courage and the work they have done. This should be the story that the media is focusing on, not a woman who is thousands of miles away who is claiming credit.”

AfghanistanAllyson Reneaurobotics team