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On completion of the grueling course that prepared him physically and mentally, Neville Dastoor was promoted to the rank of captain in the US Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps.  Deployed since March 2011 at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, Dastoor has been serving as a legal assistance attorney for the 1st Sustainment Command of the US Army, providing timely help to active duty soldiers, dependants, retirees and the Department of Defense civilians. He is required to provide advice in the areas of "consumer law, family law, landlord/tenant law, estate law, tax law, military administrative action, bankruptcy, immigration and other areas,” Dastoor responded to Parsiana’s queries. He is currently proceeding to Afghanistan to work with the combined Joint Task Force Interagency Task Force 435 in detainee operations where he will be involved in hearings "to determine the legal status of individuals captured on the battlefield.”

He spent five months at the JAG School of Military Law in Virginia from October 2010 to February 2011 to attend the Direct Commissioned Officers Course in leadership and tactic that encompassed combat training, rifle marksmanship, land navigation training, etc. The US Army JAG Corps was founded by George Washington on July 29, 1775 after he took command of the continental army. Over the years it has become one of the country’s largest law firms with more than 3,400 full and part-time attorneys. Judge advocates primarily serve as legal advisors to the command to which they are assigned and their advice is sought on issues dealing with administrative law, government contracting, civilian and military personnel law, law of war and international relations, environmental law, etc. They also serve as prosecutors for the military when conducting courts-martial and the more experienced of them serve as military judges in courts-martial and courts of enquiry.

Thirty-two-year-old Dastoor who hails from Gainsville, Florida, started his legal career in corporate law after being admitted to the Florida Bar in 2004. He worked as an associate with Zinober and McCrea where he focused on all aspects of federal and state employment.

Keen  to pursue International Law with special emphasis on International Human Rights, he went back to school at New York University to earn his LLM in international legal studies. This led him to work with the Nepal Government to secure Dalit Rights in Nepal’s new constitution and brought him to India to document violations of Dalit rights in Gujarat. His efforts have been documented in a report co-authored by him and submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

At the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands he studied the research and application of International Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law to potentially sensitive situations. At People’s Watch, a nongovernmental organization in south India, he held a fellowship with the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice where he coordinated public tribunals on police torture of Dalits in various Indian states as part of the National Project on the Prevention of Torture in India and drafted observations and recommendations.

In his article, "The Responsibility to Refine: The Need for a Security Council Committee on the Responsibility to Protect,” Dastoor had written, "The international response to situations of mass atrocities is devastatingly predictable: the media expresses outrage for a short period of time, civil society groups file reports, academics host conferences, and someone declares ‘never again.’ Such posture carries on until the rare occasion when the political stars perfectly align, a critical mass is reached, and a response occurs (traditionally referred to as ‘humanitarian interventions’) through ad hoc coalitions or regional groups acting to fill the void caused by UN Security Council’s tepid peacekeeping operations or outright Security Council inaction. Such responses, however, are always illegal and are often deemed spastic, belated, inconsistent, incomprehensive, and disingenuous... The only alternative to these ad hoc measures... is for no one to act at all — as happened in Rwanda in 1994, Srebrenica in 1995, and present day Darfur, Sudan. The derailment of international mass atrocity responses can be distilled to a single force: states’ self-interest. States’ self-interested political, economic, resource and security considerations stall responses to mass atrocities in the best of circumstances and completely block them in the worst of circumstances.” 

Dastoor’s academic education was at the Shorecrest Preparatory School of Florida, the University of Florida where he graduated with honors in political science, applied and professional ethics and business administration. Neville is the son of Dr Firdaus Dastoor, a gastroenterologist, and Tehmi, an interior designer. His brother Dr Sarosh is a periodontal/implant surgeon in Houston and considering that Neville’s constant relocation has made it difficult to establish ties with any local Zoroastrian association, the bachelor views himself as an "extended member of the community in Houston, Texas where there is a thriving Zoroastrian population.”

Sarosh and Neville’s navjotes were performed in India and over the years "our parents constantly reminded us of the ‘good thoughts, good words, good deeds’ fundamentals which have always served as a personal barometer in my life,” writes Neville. Whilst networking with the larger North American Zoroastrian community, "some of my oldest and closest friends are the children of Zoroastrians who my parents first met in the early 1970s when they first arrived in the US,” states Neville. "I love to read and write,” declares the captain who considers himself an "avid fan of American football and basketball.”