“Clock Boy”Ahmed Mohamed told reporters Monday he lost the ability to create and has “no schedule” until he returns to Qatar for school. The teen was greeted by hordes of reporters upon his return to Texas on June 27, gushing over his supposed stateside summer plans.
Breitbart Texas reported:
“The teen and his family have been living in Qatar for the past nine months where he accepted a fully-funded education scholarship from the Qatar Foundation. He told reporters he came back for a summer internship with Twitter.
Ahmed also said Facebook, NASA, and even, MIT, the prestigious university he nixed in favor of attending the Qatari school, contacted him over social media, asking him to visit while he is stateside this summer.”
While it is unknown if any of these plans ever took place, numerous local news outlets have since reported the family returned merely to visit relatives living in Irving and, it appears, to file a federal lawsuit.
On August 8, Breitbart Texas reported that the Mohameds held a press conference led by their latest personal injury attorneys, Hutchison & Stoy, who filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Irving and the Irving public school district. The suit alleges a violation of the teen’s civil rights and discrimination based on race and religion over the handling of Ahmed’s September 14, 2015 detainment and three-day school suspension after bringing a homemade, makeshift clock to class that initially was mistaken for a hoax bomb.
Somber, Ahmed told reporters: “The reality of it is I’ve lost my home, I lost my creativity, because before I used to love building things but now I can’t. There is nothing I can do.” He added his materials to build with was in storage or the trash and then, insisted he cannot create again because he does not know what parts he needs to use.
In contrast, the teen spoke live on Facebook with The Dallas Morning News in a low-risk interview on June 28 in what the reporter described as the Mohamed home. Ahmed touched on being jet-lagged and expressed he had become accustomed to media attention. During that live interview the teen said: “I want to help change Texas for a better state, and I hope that not just for Texas, but the entire world.”
Ahmed added: “People sometimes don’t want to admit their mistakes, and sometimes the best thing to do is to help them change.” It was unclear at the time if he meant his alleged mistakes or those purportedly made by the people of the state he says he loves.
On Monday, Susan Hutchison downplayed Ahmed’s experiences of meeting the President at Astronomy Night and “some famous people,” never mentioning the all-expense paid Middle East travels, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) banquet, or even the VIP Google trip. Instead, Hutchison broached the fleeting nature of whirlwind adventures and spoke to the alleged hardships the teen faced since moving to Qatar. For some time, Ahmed insisted he was homesick for Texas and his hope was to move back.
Breitbart Texas reported:
“In mid-October, though, the budding clockmaker tweeted: ‘I am coming home, tell the world I am coming home,’ only it was not Texas he meant. It was Sudan. In addition to sponsored trips to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Ahmed traveled to the family’s ancestral homeland of Sudan where he met with the country’s genocidal dictator Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes.”
In November, then family personal injury attorney, Kelly Hollingsworth demanded $15 million plus apologies from the City of Irving and the Irving ISD in two “demand letters.” They alleged the Mohameds moved to the Middle East because “threats and fear drove his family from Texas.”
Monday, Hutchison said the remedy to this matter is “money.” They are “suing for justice,” although the petition contains no dollar amount — leaving a jury to decide. Hutchison also accused Irving schools of “paranoia” towards Muslims. She characterized nearly 15-year-old Ahmed as “a little boy” and alleged he endured “horrible, hateful, mean, terrible things” people say. Ahmed added he worries for his safety in Texas and claims he cannot go outdoors without covering up for fear of facing death.
Yet, he wants to return to Texas.
In response to a reporter asking if he could go back in time and change anything from last year, Ahmed said he would “bring MLK [Martin Luther King, Jr.] back.” Just weeks before on Facebook with the Dallas newspaper, Ahmed answered he would have taken his clock to the White House for Astronomy Day.
That clock finally saw the light of day. After Monday’s press conference, Ahmed showed it to news media. It never traveled with him to the meet the President or to the Qatari school the teen attends. For months, the Mohamed family claimed they could not retrieve the clock project from the clutches of local law enforcement even though the Irving Police Department notified the family to pick it up as recently as the Friday of the September incident.
Follow Merrill Hope, a member of the original Breitbart Texas team, on Twitter @OutOfTheBoxMom.
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