Ahmed builds a clock, shows it to teachers, gets arrested for having a ‘bomb’
To Irving, Texas, where 9th-grad Irving MacArthur High student Ahmed Mohamed, 14, is being sent to juvenile detention. Police are looking to charge him with making a hoax bomb.
Ahmed Mohamed didn’t make a bomb. He didn’t pretend to make a bomb. Ahmed made a clock. He told everyone it was a clock.
But he got suspended.
Ahmed says he showed his homemade clock to one teacher:
“He was like, ‘That’s really nice. I would advise you not to show any other teachers.’”
But in English class it beeped. The teacher asked him to show what was in his bag. “She was like, it looks like a bomb,” he said. “I told her, ‘It doesn’t look like a bomb to me.’”
The teacher kept the clock.
Then the police turned up. Five of them. Ahmed says one them looked at him and said:
“Yup. That’s who I thought it was.”
Al Jazeera hints at racism:
US Muslim student arrested over ‘hoax bomb’ clock – Al Jazeera
Says Ahmed:
“They were like, ‘So you tried to make a bomb?’ I told them no, I was trying to make a clock. He said, ‘It looks like a movie bomb to me.’”
Police spokesman James McLellanis unconvinced:
“We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb. He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation… It could reasonably be mistaken as a device if left in a bathroom or under a car. The concern was, what was this thing built for? Do we take him into custody?”
So while the police worked out what it was and wasn’t, they handcuffed Ahmed and stuck him in the holding bay. He’s now at home – doing time:
Posted: 16th, September 2015 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
