Remember Ahmed, the 14-year old who made a clock and brought it to school for show-and-tell, whose teacher decided he’d be better off in jail for displaying creativity? His family of now seeks redress in the sum of $15 million in damages and an apology from the city and its schools in order to avoid a lawsuit.
According to IBTimes, the family has issued separate letters to the city of Irving and the Irving Independent School District, stating that Mohamed was wrongfully arrested as well as illegally detained and questioned, without his parents being present. The family’s attorneys argued that the teenager’s name and likeness will be “forever associated with arguably the most contentious and divisive socio-political issue of our time…”
Ahmed Mohamed, 14, was arrested Sept. 14 when his teacher mistook his homemade clock for a bomb. Criminal charges were dropped against the teenager, but Mohamed was still suspended from school for three days and had his clock confiscated. His arrest sparked a global response and ignited a national discussion on how Muslims are perceived in the U.S.
Twitter, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and President Barack Obama all showed support for Mohamed, who was even invited to the White House after the ordeal. But the Mohamed family insisted that the attention actually ruined their lives and drove their decision to leave the United States, their lawyers said, as Reuters reported. The Mohamed family announced in October that they planned to move to Qatar and that Mohamed had accepted an offer from the Qatar Foundation to study its Young Innovators Program. The family now lives in Doha, the capital of Qatar.