If You’re a Ninth Grader from Sudan Who Makes A Clock... The Cops Treat You Like a “Terrorist”
September 21, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Fourteen-year old Ahmed Mohamed went to high school in Irving, Texas, near Dallas. He is from a Muslim family that immigrated to the United States from Sudan. He likes studying robotics and engineering. On September 15, he went to school wearing a NASA T-shirt. He brought an electronic clock he had made at home and showed it to his engineering teacher, hoping to start a robotics club. The teacher told him not to show it to anyone else. Ahmed put the clock in his backpack and when it beeped during his English class, the teacher confiscated it.
Then, later in the day, the principal came with four police officers. Ahmed was arrested, handcuffed, and taken to juvenile detention. Ahmed kept insisting the clock was... just a clock! But the cops kept interrogating him, without his parents even present, let alone a lawyer—trying to get him to confess to bringing a bomb or a fake bomb to school. They fingerprinted Ahmed, and took his mug shot.
Ahmed later said in a YouTube video, “It made me feel like I wasn’t human. It made me feel like a criminal.”
Police initially considered charging Ahmed with making a “hoax bomb.” Not until the next day did they announce no charges would be filed. Still Ahmed was given a three-day suspension from school!
This is post 9/11 America, where if your family is from a certain country... If you’re Muslim... It doesn’t matter if you’re just a KID who’s interested in science. It doesn’t matter if you wear a NASA T-shirt to school and want to start a science club. The police will treat you like they consider you a “terrorist threat” and you will have NO rights.
No matter how much Obama and other voices in high places are now rushing to criticize how Ahmed was treated—this incident shines a light on the racist, anti-Muslim atmosphere promoted by the so-called “war on terror” and the illegitimacy of the police who consider a kid with a clock a dangerous suspect to be arrested and interrogated.
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