US teen Ahmed arrested for ‘clock-bomb’ gets his clock back

The Texas boy was arrested on September 14 when he showed a teacher at his school his homemade clock, which the teacher feared was a bomb.

October 24, 2015 07:32 pm | Updated March 25, 2016 02:08 am IST - Houston

Ahmed Mohammed

Ahmed Mohammed

A Muslim student, who became an Internet sensation after his arrest in the US for bringing to school a homemade clock that was mistaken for a bomb, on Saturday announced that he has got the timepiece back.

The family of Mohamed, who just came back from a trip to the White House where he met President Obama, earlier said in that it had hired two Dallas attorneys Thomas Bowers and Reggie London “to pursue Ahmed’s legal rights and regain his science project from the Irving Police Department.”

The clock had been cleared for release “for weeks” since September 16 and that the department notified Mohamed’s family on September 18 that it could be picked up, London said.

Bowers said they couldn’t pick the clock up for a while as Mohamed, a ninth-grader, “has been busy travelling” and searching for new schools.

“If the clock was released so quickly, why’d they arrest him for it in the first place? Who in their right mind would think anything evil about it?” Browers was quoted as saying by the ABC news

The Texas boy was arrested on September 14 when he showed a teacher at his school his homemade clock, which the teacher feared was a bomb.

No charges were filed, but his detention provoked widespread accusations of racial profiling, sparking a larger discussion of Islam, immigration and ethnicity.

Mohmamed’s family recently said the teen was moving to Qatar after accepting an offer from the Qatar Foundation to study at its Young Innovators Programme.

“Qatar was a cool place to visit. I loved the city of Doha because it’s so modern. I saw so many amazing schools there, many of them campuses of famous American universities.

The teachers were great. I think I will learn a lot and have fun, too,” Ahmed said in a statement.

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