Father of ‘Clock Boy’ Sues Glenn Beck, Others

DALLAS (CN) - The father of "clock boy" Ahmed Mohamed sued political commentator Glenn Beck, his network TheBlaze, Fox Television Stations and a Texas mayor over what he says are false statements in broadcasts about his son's arrest for bringing a homemade clock to school.

Mohamed Alhassan Mohamed sued Beck, his network, Fox, Irving mayor Beth Van Duyne, the Center for Security Policy, its executive vice president Jim Hanson, Ben Ferguson and Ben Shapiro in county court on Sept. 21.

A black Muslim immigrant from Sudan, Mohamed, 15, built the clock at home using a circuit board and power supply that he wired to a digital display inside a metal pencil case.

When he brought the device to MacArthur High School in Irving last September to show to a teacher, he was interrogated and arrested. An image of a bewildered Mohamed being led away in handcuffs quickly trended on Twitter with the hashtag #IStandWithMohamed.

Irving officials later determined no crime had been committed and released Mohamed to his parents. School officials suspended him for three days, but his family withdrew him from school before he returned. Mohamed's family later accepted an offer to move to Qatar on scholarship for the rest of his high school and undergraduate studies.

The complaint says that several statements were made by Beck, Hanson and Van Duyne on a Sept. 22, 2015, broadcast on TheBlaze. The 21-page complaint quotes Beck as saying to Van Duyne, "My theory is that for some reason Irving is important to the Islamists, not the Muslims, but the Islamists. It could be as simple as the progressives trying to turn Texas blue, and this is just the place where they're just going to start planting the seeds and taking a stand. You pissed them off, and now this is a dog whistle. This is not a story that is for anybody to hear, except for the Islamists because once you create a boogeyman, now all the money, all the resources, all the intellectual power, all is focused on your little town of Irving, Texas."

Mohamed says Hanson agreed with Beck, saying, "Think it's happening. I don't think there's any question that this latest event was a PR stunt. It was a staged event where someone convinced this kid to bring a device that he didn't build, as you mentioned. It's a RadioShack clock that he put in a briefcase, and in a briefcase it looks like a bomb ... They did that to create the exact scenario that played out. They wanted people to react, and they wanted to portray this kid as an innocent victim. I think he was a pawn of potentially his father. His sister actually claimed that she was suspended. His sister told MSNBC that she was suspended by the same school district for making a bomb threat years ago. Don't know if that's true yet, but she said that in her own words. So, there's a vendetta from them, and they're tied, as you mentioned, with CAIR and CAIR is Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-tied. They're basically involved in civilization jihad, so I think you're right."

According to Mohamed, Van Duyne said on numerous occasions that the younger Mohamed was not forthcoming with the school or police and that he brought a "hoax bomb" to school, citing an interview broadcast on Fox-affiliate KDFW where she allegedly said the family was "non-responsive" to a city request to release records about the incident.

"These statements are false and were made negligently and/or with malice," Mohamed says in the complaint. "Ahmed did not take a 'hoax bomb' to school. He never claimed that it was a bomb, threatened anyone or attempted to scare anyone. Ahmed answered all questions about his alarm clock and his intent. The City never made a request to the family for permission to release records."

Mohamed wants a retraction and correction of the statements, and an acknowledgement that "the original broadcast was false, erroneous and stating that the Mohamed family are peaceful Muslims who have been falsely accused of being terrorists and engaging in a jihad."

He demands the correction must also state "the arrest and suspension of Ahmed Mohamed was not a stunt and it was not preplanned, staged or engineered by anyone, including Mohamed Mohamed. Ahmed was a young man eager to please his teacher and took a contraption to school as a crude alarm clock. The alarm clock was placed in a pencil box that Ahmed had from the 7th grade - not into a briefcase."

According to Mohamed, Ferguson said on a KDFW broadcast on Nov. 23,2015 that "this was a preplanned idea by his father. The complaint also claims Shapiro said it was "clear" that "this was a hoax, this was a setup and that President Obama fell for it because it confirms a couple of his pre-stated biases against police and against people who he perceives to be Islamophobic."

TheBlaze did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment Monday afternoon.

Last month, Mohamed filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city, the Irving Independent School District and principal Daniel Cummings, citing the district's "long and ugly history of race struggles." The lawsuit came eight months after the family demanded $15 million and a written apology.

Beck is currently facing an unrelated defamation lawsuit in Boston Federal Court filed by Adbulrahman Alharbi, a Saudi Arabian student whom Beck identified as the "money man" behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

Follow @davejourno

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