Texas Teen Named Mohamed Arrested After Making Digital Clock And Taking It To School

CPAFMKrUkAABI2aAhmed Mohamed, 14, had thought that he had achieved something that would garner praise at at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas. He had made a homemade digital clock from a pencil case. Instead, teachers called police and Ahmed was interrogated and taken to the police station on suspicion of a bomb hoax. UPDATE: some critics have expressed doubt over the clock as well as the narrative.

The teen, who wants to go to MIT, was a robotics club member and won awards for his inventions. He said that he actually showed it to one teacher who said it was impressive but recommended that he not show it to people at the school. Then it beeped in class and he showed the source of the noise.

150916134402-clock-ahmed-mohamed-texas-medium-plus-169Ahmed’s English teacher thought the clock was a bomb and that triggered a bizarre response of multiple teachers and police who took Ahmed into custody without any evidence supporting the allegation of a bomb. He said that was pulled out of class and taken to a room with four police officers. He said that one immediately said “Yup. That’s who I thought it was.” Another said to him, “So you tried to make a bomb?” He said that he kept saying it was a clock.

Irving Police spokesman Officer James McLellan insisted “We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only tell us that it was a clock.”

Well, that was probably because it was a clock Officer McLellan.

Chief Larry Boyd added that Ahmed should have been “forthcoming” by going beyond the description that what he made was a clock. Like what? I can only think of two relevant points. One it is a clock. Two it is not a bomb.

What he did allegedly say is that he wanted to speak with his parents, but that was allegedly one thing that the police did not want to hear. He was held without a lawyer or speaking with his parents according to reports.

Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, reportedly came to his country after fighting for greater freedoms in Sudan where he twice ran for the presidency. He would find his son “surrounded by five police and . . . handcuffed.” He also learned that the police had denied him the right to call his parents by saying that they had not technically put him under arrest.

His family have questioned whether he would have been treated the same way if his name were not Mohamed and was Muslim.

Thousands have rallied around Ahmed under the hashtag “#IstandwithAhmed.” They include Nasa scientists who noticed he was wearing a NASA teeshirt as well as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Even President Barack Obama, tweeted to Ahmed: “Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”

166 thoughts on “Texas Teen Named Mohamed Arrested After Making Digital Clock And Taking It To School”

  1. Obama to honor kid in the White House tomorrow, after the little terrorist in training, visits the “Butcher of Darfur” al- bashir.

    Al-Bashir is widely known in the intelligence community as “the Butcher of Darfur” and to this day is wanted for war crimes for his part in orchestrating the genocide in Darfur (wherein some 400,000+ have been slaughtered.)

    http://www.allenbwest.com/2015/10/look-who-clock-boy-visits-days-before-white-house-muslim-gala/

  2. Yeah, and, of course, there is this:

    Frontpage mag
    09/30/15
    ____________________________________________________________________________________

    Ahmed Mohamed’s Qatari Vacation with the Muslim Brotherhood
    Teenage clockmaker invited to Qatar by an organization linked to the terror group.
    September 30, 2015
    Arnold Ahlert
    13
    48412584
    The story of Ahmed Mohamed, the Dallas schoolboy made famous by the reaction to his arrest for bringing a homemade clock that resembled a suitcase bomb to school, has taken another curious turn. According to the Dallas Morning News, Ahmed and his family have accepted an invitation extended by the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development to visit Qatar. Their sister institution, the Qatar Foundation International (QFI) was founded by Sheikh bin Al Thani, who also created Al Jazeera. QFI has links to the Muslim Brotherhood (MB).

    The trip is another leg on what is best described as a celebrity-like tour. On Monday, Ahmed’s newfound status took him to New York’s City Hall, where he received a proclamation from Public Advocate Letitia James. James referred to Ahmed as a role model and allowed him to sit in her council chamber chair. Ahmed was also given a tour of City Hall by Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, and was presented with framed commendation by city Comptroller Scott Stringer. “All students should engage w/ science and technology – Ahmed Mohamed is a role model for all NYers,” Stringer tweeted after the meeting.

    Such enthusiasm for Ahmed’s scientific acumen is belied by some inconvenient realities. In a YouTube video entitled “Ahmed Mohamed Clock is a FRAUD,”
    electrical expert Thomas Talbot makes the case that Ahmed’s timepiece is actually a commercial clock removed from its casing. “This child, uh, nothing against him personally, never built a clock,” Talbot insists, further adding he believes the device was “intentionally” built to look suspicious. A blog known as Art Voice, identifies the device as one sold in a 1986 Radio Shack catalogue, and cites two investigators who conclude that Ahmed “disassembled a manufactured clock and installed it in a large pencil box without its casing,” possibly to “provoke suspicion or to resemble a bomb.”

    Adding further fuel to such speculation is the reality that Ahmed’s older sister, Eyman Mohamed, revealed she was suspended from middle school in the same district in 2009. “I got suspended from school for three days from this stupid same district, from this girl saying I wanted to blow up the school, something I had nothing to do with,” she insisted. “I got suspended and I didn’t do anything about it and so when I heard about Ahmed, I was so mad because it happened to me and I didn’t get to stand up, so I’m making sure he’s standing up because it’s not right. So I’m not jealous, I’m kinda like—it’s like he’s standing for me.”

    District spokeswoman Lesley Weaver explained the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prevented her from providing any details about Eyman’s suspension unless her parents signed that document. They have refused to do so, and thus the school is unable to release information.

    Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, who insisted his son was “hurt and was tortured and arrested and mistreated in front of his friends inside of the school,” and who subsequently withdrew all of his children from their Irving Independent School District schools earlier this month, has led a politically active life. The former customs worker at Khartoum International Airport, who earned a philosophy degree from Cairo University in Khartoum before emigrating to the U.S., ran for president of Sudan twice. In 2012 he made headlines for participating as a “defense attorney” in Rev. Terry Jones’s mock trial of the Quran at his Gainesville church. Jones ultimately burned a copy of the book, precipitating riots in Afghanistan.

    Such political activism may partially explain how effectively this family has managed Ahmed’s newfound celebrity status, to the point where a Dallas public relations firm wants to sign him. “The last few weeks have been truly life-changing for my son Ahmed and for our family,” his father explained — in a prepared statement announcing the trip to Qatar. Mohamed also has plans to take his family to Mecca. And when he gets back, his son intends to take President Barack Obama up on his White House invitation.

    All of this has been driven by an American left that continues to insist Ahmed was singled out, not because his clock looked like a suitcase bomb (a side by side comparison can be seen here), but because the nation in general, and Texas in particular, is a seething cauldron of Islamophobia. Again, such accusations ignore inconvenient realities, beginning with the assertion by Irving, TX police spokesman James McLellan that Ahmed was uncooperative. “We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only say it was a clock. He didn’t offer any explanation as to what it was for, why he created this device, why he brought it to school,” McLellan stated.

    Furthermore, this was not Ahmed’s first experience with trouble in school. At Sam Houston Middle School Ahmed “racked up weeks of suspensions,” according to the Texas newspaper, which further noted that while “his discipline record is confidential and his father didn’t want to discuss it, the file was thick by some accounts.”

    More to the point as the Daily Caller explains, Eagle Scouts, honor students and others, including kids as young as five, have had their lives upended, not by bigotry, but by “zero tolerance” policies. Policies that reached the height of stupidity when a second-grader was suspended from school for biting a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun. Most of these students were white non-Muslim males. “But Obama never worried about the fate of those students,” the Caller reminds us.

    And if one is still inclined to excoriate the MacArthur High School officials for erring on the side of caution, perhaps they should take the Obama administration to task as well: “If you see something, say something” is a trademarked slogan of the Department of Homeland Security, and DHS also urges Americans to report suspicious activity that includes the observation of “unusual items.”

    Suspicious activity is a term that might be aptly applied to the Muslim Brotherhood-linked QFI. In 2012 QFI launched the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics. The Center’s director is Professor Tariq Ramadan, who is the grandson of the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder, Hassan al Banna. Ramadan was banned from coming to the United States until 2010 when the Obama administration granted him a visa to lecture at a school in New York. QFI has also instituted Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi Scholarships, named after the notorious Egyptian cleric who twice turned down offers to be the MB’s highest-ranking official. Al Qaradawi has been documented endorsing the “abduction and killing of Americans in Iraq,” and the desire to end his life as a martyr by shooting “Allah’s enemies, the Jews.”

    “Qaradawi has personally attended scores of foundation events, including conferences at which he served as a keynote speaker,” World Net Daily reveals.

    QFI recently bestowed a $75,000 grant on the Arabic Immersion Magnet School in the Houston Independent School District to fund “Arabic language activities and Arab cultural events for students, teacher professional development, educational resources, promotion of the Arabic language, community outreach, and curriculum development to promote the educational mission of the Arabic Immersion Magnet School.” Ahmed has been offered a QFI tour of “Education City,” in Doha, Qatar’s capital city. The Dallas Morning News describes it as a “5-square-mile cluster of universities and think tanks.”

    Upon Ahmed’s return, the family will retrieve the clock still sitting in the Irving police station and take it to the White House. “His main goal is to take it to the president,” said Ahmed’s uncle, Aldean Mohamed.

    President Obama’s main goal will be to use the Texas teenager as his latest prop to indict the nation for crimes of racism and intolerance, much as he did with Cambridge Professor Henry Louis Gates, Florida’s Trayvon Martin and Ferguson’s Michael Brown. Once again the president will embrace the selective indignity that is his trademark.

  3. Lisa N.

    The MSM is not reporting that our little, innocent and bespectacled Ahmed has a sister, who was suspended, from the very same school, for making a bomb threat. I don’t recall that little nugget of info being disseminated in the reports that I have previously read about this incident. How interesting that the various news outlets conveniently chose to obfuscate that tidbit. I did read, however, that the parents are stating that they wish to change schools. I suppose that they are shopping for one where bomb threats are encouraged and ticking bomb-like pencil boxes, bearing circuit boards, are welcomed.

  4. Randy Jet – Lots if pilots carry weapons on board and all they have to do is let TSA know it and it’s acceptable. I bet you hate that a pilot can exercise his 2nd Amendment right onto the plane.

    It’s not my rules that TSA asks all flight crew to put all of their stuff through an x-Ray machine but how do know someone didn’t put or drop an explosive device in their luggage ? You don’t Mr. I’m a legend in my own mind and know more than anybody Randy Jet.

    1. Lisa, You are so wrong on so many things and lie about most things, that I only reply to inform others. First off, pilots CANNOT simply bring their own guns on board and through screening if they tell the TSA. After 9/11, I joined the Airline Pilots Security Alliance to lobby for something similar to what you state. It passed AGAINST THE OPPOSITION OF W BUSH and the airlines and TSA. When that happened, the TSA called our reps into a conference on implementing the arming of pilots. Our mistake was that we did not specify and write out the actual program of how to do this. We left it to the good faith of the TSA, a BIG mistake. They stated that they were going to make it so onerous that no pilot in his right mind would apply. Their approach was to defy the intent of Congress and they made no bones about it. Bush’s choice for the head of the TSA made his first act, spending half a million dollars to furnish his office. He was a former Secret Service guy too and opposed to the program.

      Our proposal was to allow all pilots who had law enforcement and/or military service background to immediately be allowed to carry their own personal gun or the one specified by the TSA at our own expense, with a discount for bulk purchase. Then we would have six months to accomplish TSA mandated training at a local police or other agency. This would have armed a huge number of pilots armed quickly and make a major increase in security. Instead, the TSA fired the first director of the FFDO program because he followed the intent of the law and made it too easy for pilots to be armed. So they moved in a new director who would make it harder and more expensive for pilots to be armed. They moved the training center from Atlanta which was accessible easily for all to the wilds of New Mexico some 100 miles from commercial air service. They put in so many restrictions and requirements of three psychological exams from three different doctors, paid for by the pilot, to paying for all the room and board for one week taken from the pilots vacation time from work. From the reports I have heard from those who went through the course, it is quite good. Of course, it can only handle a few pilots at a time, and one has to return to get re-qualified every year, thus making a new bottleneck.

      The procedures that the TSA mandated for carrying the weapons were incredibly stupid since they refuse to allow the FFDO to carry them as all other LEOs do. It must be in a separate locked box at all times when not in the cockpit. It must also be in the locked box any time the cockpit door is open. When jumpseating the FFDO had to put it in the baggage compartments and watch as it went inside. Not surprisingly a good number of those boxes given such treatment that screamed GUN, wound up missing! The TSA then decided that the FFDOs could carry the box to the cockpit along with their carryon bags. I decided that it was more trouble than it was worth, and the protocol for having the gun was so stupid as to make it worthless. I can see my telling a hijacker when I take a lavatory break, wait while I get my gun out of my locked box so I can counter you as you rush the open cockpit door! So since we are supposed to follow all the rules, and pilots are programmed to do that, it is not an option for me to simply say screw the TSA, I will disregard the rules. As for your contention that a person could drop a gun into my bag, I would welcome that since I am always happy to get a gun for free. The crew bags go in the cockpit or the forward cargo hold and that is true of jumpseater bags as well. So they have no access to it, and when I leave and find it, I will be happy to keep it.

      By the way, after all these years, the TSA has finally gotten rid of the people like you, and crew members no longer have to go through the screening as long as they are in uniform and/or have their airline ID badges showing. The worst thing is that over 200 Federal agencies have people who are authorized to be armed with little or no training. These range from the Bureau of Printing and Engraving to the Dept.of Agriculture. All armed persons must report to the captain and inform him they are armed and they must meet and recognize other armed persons on the plane. I had one guy who was armed from the Dept.of Agriculture, and I asked him why he needed to be armed. I said are the gophers in Minnesota THAT big? Then there is the problem that local cops are allowed to carry their weapons on board. There are lots of cops who have had no training or psychological screening, yet they are armed. In Houston, one constable did such a great job of screening that he hired five ex cons as his deputies since they had worked on his campaign. The reason they had so much free time to do that was they had just gotten out of prison and had no regular job. They were finally exposed by the Houston Post reporter who DID to a background check. Then we have the brother in law problem, when the chief of police’s guy gets out of prison, and needs a job, so he gets hired as a cop. There are lots of small towns where this kind of thing goes on.

      I checked on your saying the Ahmed kids sister was kicked out of that school. I read the thing from West’s site and even HE does not say that at all. He states SHE said she was unfairly suspended for three days when she was new and in middle school, NOT high school, only on the ACCUSATION from another girl who said she made a threat to blow up the school. She regretted not fighting that charge at the time. So it is not even a credible threat since she denied doing it, and West himself does not buy the story at all. He thinks that it is made up that she was suspended. So if West thinks it did not happen, I am more inclined to not believe the story. I need more proof.

  5. Bet you willfully blind liberals didn’t know that Ahmed Mohammad’s sister was either suspended or kicked out of that very same school for making a bomb threat!

    If it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it’s a duck! These people knew exactly what they were doing when they sent their son to school with a pre bomb disguised as a 1985 circuit board fake radio.

    So please lawyer up and just remember that all of their garbage will be revealed and the roaches will scatter when it’s all brought to light.

  6. randyjet

    You do realize, don’t you, that many uniforms belonging to those employed by the airlines and their employees have gone missing in recent years, don’t you? That, coupled with the ease with which those badges can be replicated, shouldn’t be lost on you if, in fact, you are a pilot, as you claim to be. You are miffed that someone, purporting to be a pilot, suffered through the indignities of a thorough TSA screening? Just fly the planes, if that is what you do, and allow those trained in security screening do their jobs. Those little people, that you appear to take joy in demeaning for simply doing their jobs, allow you to get into that cockpit with some modicum of security–yes, just some modicum of security. The system isn’t perfect, but a far less perfect system would allow anyone sporting a pilot’s uniform to be waived through. For a pilot, you have a very tenuous grasp on the dangers inherent in today’s airline industry.

  7. CAIR is an Islamic terror group and is representing this kids father. Their pissed off at the Mayor and City Council of the City of Irving for shutting down their makeshift Sharia Law Court this past year. This was no clock and again, it would shut down an airport.

    Below is the real image of what he brought to his school. I would shut down the airport and call a 29 on this and test it with the explosive trace detector machine.

    If your inventing a new clock why would you use a 30 year old circuit board that’s unavailable today?

    https://counterjihadnews.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/ahmed-mohamed-clock.jpg?w=584&h=329

    1. Lisa reminds me of the TSA screener who was strip searching an airline captain who was in uniform, with two badges hanging off his shirt and his crew behind him. As he took off his hat, coat, belt, shoes, put his keys, and all the contents of his pockets on the tray, along with his badges, he asked why he was subjected to such intense and pointless screening. The answer the TSA person gave was that they had to make sure he had no weapon that would let him get control of an aircraft!

      Then to add insult to injury, a Sikh was passed through with turban intact, a KNIFE, and kept his sandals on. This kid was obviously reusing an old circuit board for a new use and was NOT INVENTING anything. Then to add insult, there is no explosive charge which would make it a bomb. It fails the simple definition of a bomb that ALL security people and pilots like myself are trained on. Since the school was not evacuated, nor the bomb squad called, and the device was put in the back of the patrol car with the kid, it shows that even the cops KNEW it was not a bomb. Lisa has less snap than the cops.

  8. BFM:

    “In case any readers do not know, circuit boards don’t tick – not unless they have extra parts or programming (contained in a static memory device such as a programmable read only memory device – prom) to make them tick.”

    You’re right. I didn’t read anywhere that it made any sounds. I referred to a “ticking box of wires” to try to illustrate why people would be worried such a thing might be a bomb, but I should not have used that example.

    On another note, when I was in high school, the kids made things like this in shop class. I wonder if they do not have such projects anymore, so this would be a totally alien concept at the school.

  9. BFM, I always wonder why those who make such claims never link to a source. Perhaps they got such info from a source known for it’s propaganda?

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