‘Clock Kid’ and family seek $15M in damages

The family of a Texas Muslim teenager arrested for taking a homemade clock to school, where it was mistaken for a bomb, is demanding $15 million in damages and an apology from the city of Irving and its schools to avoid a lawsuit, lawyers said on Monday.

The lawyers represent the family of Ahmed Mohamed, 14, a student who dabbles in robotics and attended MacArthur High School in Irving, west of Dallas. His arrest in September sparked controversy, with many saying he was taken into custody because of his religion.

His arrest was the source of widespread controversy after a photo showing the bespectacled ninth-grader clad in a NASA T-shirt being led away in handcuffs went viral. Ahmed became known as the Clock Kid and won support from President Barack Obama, who invited him to take his "cool clock" to the White House, and from Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, who said "having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest."

Ahmed's arrest sparked allegations of racial and religious profiling, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations called the case an example of the climate of hate and manufactured fear around the religion that has been fueled by the Republican Party's leading presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Ben Carson. 

The letter to the city sets out the family's claim in detail.

“Mayor Beth Van Duyne lied about Ahmed and his family, and she did it to an audience that is on the absolute fringe of American life,” the letter states. The mayor sat for an interview with conservative media personality Glenn Beck.

While Ahmed was being questioned by police, he was told that if he did not sign a confession, he would expelled, the letter said. 

"That is a huge threat for a kid like Ahmed," the letter to the city stated. "He rated MIT’s interest in having him as a student as more exciting than meeting the president of the United States."

Referring to Irving Police Department spokesman James McLellan’s saying that the clock “could reasonably be mistaken as a device if left in a bathroom or under a car,” the letter stated, "this is an absurd rationalization ... If the clock had been left somewhere that it looked planted, it would have looked like Ahmed lost his tiger hologram pencil box."

"The only reason for the overreaction was that the responsible adults involved irrationally assumed that Ahmed was dangerous because of his race, national origin and religion. Let’s face it; if Ahmed’s clock were 'Jennifer’s clock' and if the pencil case were ruby red bedazzled with a clear rhinestone skull and crossbones on the cover, this would never have happened," his attorneys wrote. "Understandably, Mr. Mohamed was furious at the treatment of his son — and at the rancid, openly discriminatory intent that motivated it." 

His parents said in October that the family would be moving to Qatar and he had accepted an offer from the Qatar Foundation to study at its Young Innovators Program. The announcement came a few hours after he was at the White House for an astronomy night hosted by Obama.

The Mohameds, now living in Doha, said that the attention that followed Ahmed's arrest ruined their lives and eventually drove them out of the United States, according to their lawyers.

Al Jazeera with wire services