As the Washington Post noted at the height of the controversy over his “clock,” Ahmed was showered with support from “Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton and Google co-founder Sergey Brin,” while “Tweets, think pieces and daytime TV segments were dedicated to dissecting how Ahmed’s situation typified racism and Islamaphobia [sic] in America,” and he “visited the Google Science Fair, met with Sudan’s President Omar al Bashir, posed with the queen of Jordan at a United Nations Summit, appeared on the ‘Doctor Oz’ show and last night, made it to the White House.” Ahmed Mohamed became the darling of the political and media elites and met Obama. He was celebrated everywhere as an innocent victim of “Islamophobia.”
He became an international hero. Yet now he claims to be “traumatized,” and wants $15,000,000. This lawsuit will be the final nail in the coffin of “If you see something, say something”: school officials will now let Muslim students engage in all manner of suspicious behavior — why risk career suicide to stop them?
“‘Clock kid’ seeking $15 million in damages,” by Jessica Contrera, Washington Post, November 24, 2015 (thanks to Steve):
Two months after “clock kid” Ahmed Mohamed made international headlines, new details of his controversial arrest emerged Monday in a letter his attorney has sent to school and city officials in Irving, Tex.
As many as seven adults teamed up to interrogate the 14-year-old boy after a teacher mistook his homemade clock for a bomb and pressured him to sign a confession, according to the “letter of demand” from his lawyer warning of plans to file a $15 million suit.
Ahmed’s September arrest, deemed an overreaction by many observers, drew waves of sympathy and extensive news coverage; President Obama invited him to join several other science-inclined students at the White House’s “Astronomy Night” last month.
But his family, which shortly thereafter took up a benefactor’s offer to relocate to Qatar, argued in the letter that the boy’s reputation has been “permanently scarred.” They are seeking not only financial reparations but written apologies from the city’s mayor and police chief.
“Everyone in the country and around the world believes this has been a wonderful experience for Ahmed’s family, and in some ways, it has been,” said Anthony Bond, a family friend. “But now they are settled in Qatar, they have realized they are tremendously traumatized.”…
Nonsense. The family was claiming that Ahmed was traumatized in September, before they left for Qatar.
The family is demanding an apology from Van Duyne and others involved because they would like to return to Irving, attorney Kelly Hollingsworth said….
“The generosity and support Ahmed has received has been very much appreciated, but what the system has to do is try to find a way to redress him,” Hollingsworth said. “What’s the effect of this young man having his reputation in the global community scarred for the rest of his life?”