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http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/23/us/ahmed- ... apologies/

Fifteen million dollars and apologies from the mayor and police chief.

That's what an attorney says the family of Ahmed Mohamed is demanding from city and school officials in Irving, Texas, or they say they'll file a civil suit.



In September, 14-year-old Ahmed made international headlines when he brought a handmade clock to school to show his teachers.

One of them thought it was a bomb and notified school authorities, who then called police. Ahmed was detained, questioned and hauled off in handcuffs. At the time, the school said it reacted with caution because the contraption that had wires could have been an explosive device.

It wasn't. It was just a clock.

But despite the surge of support for Ahmed, the attorney representing his family says the teen suffered severe psychological trauma and that his "reputation in the global community is permanently scarred."Looks to me like someone want to cash in BIG TIME.

In two letters sent Monday to attorneys representing the school district and the city, attorney Kelly Hollingsworth says that Ahmed's civil rights were violated by the way the case was handled.

Irving city officials told CNN they were reviewing the letter and had no comment.

School district spokeswoman Lesley Weaver told CNN that the district is aware of the letter and also had no comment.

Hollingsworth, who says he was recently retained by the teen's father, alleges that the teenager was not read his Miranda rights during his arrest and that those involved with the incident tried to cover up mistakes "with a media campaign that further alienated the child at the center of this maelstrom."

Rather than calming the situation, Hollingsworth says in the letters, officials in Irving stoked the flames.

"They tried to push responsibility off on the victim -- Ahmed. They have even implied publicly that what has come of this has been good for Ahmed, as though the resilience of this fine boy and his fine family somehow excused what they did," the letters say. "It does not, for there is no excuse."

Hollingsworth argues that the damages are numerous but difficult to quantify. He notes an online blog post that superimposed the 14-year-old's face onto a famous image of Osama bin Laden, a "Clock Boy" Halloween costume on a website and harassment suffered by the teen's siblings.why not try to cash in on that instead of his dubious claim of being "traumatized?

"Ahmed will now forever be associated with bomb making wholly without basis," Hollingsworth says.

Among numerous allegations, the letters say that the authorities interrogated the Muslim teenager, alone, for at least one hour and 25 minutes, a period that was recorded on a police officer's iPhone. At one point, according to the letters, a police officer who first saw Ahmed said, "Yep. That's who I thought it was."

"Ahmed clearly was singled out because of his race, national origin and religion," the letters say.

If officials don't comply with the family's demands for apologies and compensation for the damages within 60 days, the letters say, a civil lawsuit will be filed.

SEND HIM AND HIS DIRTY FAMILY BACK TO WHERE THEY CAME FROM (DIDN'T THEY MOVE BACK TO QATAR?)

see something say something...., unless it s a muslim, (who hangs out with his buddy, bashir, in sudan) then you are a racist.

that kid reveled in his fame, he was all smiles....

if I still gambled I would bet that someone in that kids family gets busted for terror support or action

You're both racists!

Shame on you and may the fleas of a thousand rabid camels settle in your pubic region.

dales wrote:[Looks to me like someone want to cash in BIG TIME.

And well they should. When several segments of officialdom conspire to label and treat a child like a terrorist, when their surrounding actions (or more pointedly, lack thereof) show that they did not believe said child to pose any real threat, then they should pay, and pay through the nose, both individually and institutionally.

I guess you didn t pay attention to all the info that came out about the boys family and didn t pay attention to his travels and who hosted him and feted him after his "clock" incident.

I guess you didn t pay attention to what the boys actions that day were. I guess you didn t pay attention to what the boys father posted and spoke about, but only in Arabic....

and no I m not gonna bother to dig it all up for you.

shoulda paid attention.....

Yeah, I paid attention to all the post hoc rationalizations for why it was justifiable to consider this boy a threat. It all comes up against one undeniable fact - no one reacted the way they undeniably would have, if they had really believed the device to be a bomb, or even a "hoax bomb". That completely invalidates ALL of the actions they took against the boy that day,. and nothing that he or anyone in his family is alleged to have said or done before or since can change that.

fair enough. I guess we just disagree then.

Scooter wrote:

dales wrote:[Looks to me like someone want to cash in BIG TIME.

And well they should. When several segments of officialdom conspire to label and treat a child like a terrorist, when their surrounding actions (or more pointedly, lack thereof) show that they did not believe said child to pose any real threat, then they should pay, and pay through the nose, both individually and institutionally.

15 MILLION DOLLARS?!?

Someone called up "Better Call Saul" and greed and immorality just came together.


Scum.


yrs,
rubato

I predict that a judge will find that the boys purpose was to create a climate of insecurity and to garner attention to that and to himself, and that he succeeded.

dismissed before trial.

If there are big damages (and that is questionable), such damages come from the publicity, and the publicity was created not by the school but by the family. Or did I miss something in that story? School was wrong, but not sure it was the cause of more than minimal damages.

he actually profited from the whole thing, financially at least.

plus the street cred with the islamists is priceless

All this alarming information is second hand

wesw wrote:I predict that a judge will find that the boys purpose was to create a climate of insecurity and to garner attention to that and to himself, and that he succeeded.

dismissed before trial.

good luck with that wes; I'd love to see any evidence the defendants could produce to show that.

Long Run wrote:If there are big damages (and that is questionable), such damages come from the publicity, and the publicity was created not by the school but by the family. Or did I miss something in that story? School was wrong, but not sure it was the cause of more than minimal damages.

His arrest, interrogation and detention violated pretty much every constitutional protection that should have applied in the circumstances, even before we get to the special protections provided to juveniles under Texas law. The school contributed to those violations by not only neglecting, but actively refusing to notify the boy's parents so that they could be present, and by using the threat of expulsion to extract a statement from him. Rather than act as the guardian of his civil rights in the absence of his parents, the school undermined them by both action and omission.

Oh yeah, then suspends him for three days, and sends a letter to all the parents the next day; the purpose of both being to justify their (over)reactions by declaring him guilty of bringing into the school an object likely to cause alarm (and thus prohibited), in essence convicting him of the crime that police determined he had not committed. And the police, in spite of clearing him, felt that they had to go to the press and accuse a 14 year old child of being "less than forthcoming" when being interrogated, because he couldn't come up with a "broader explanation" of "it's a clock" that would presumably reassure them that it was innocuous.

Well hey, how about this - children should not be punished because their innocence prevents them from viewing the world through the most paranoid lens. And a child who is "not forthcoming" when being interrogated by four big guys with guns might have done better if you had allowed their parents to be there to make them feel safe and rephrase your obtuse questions to elicit the info you need.

Is it at all surprising, when the officials involved continue to cast a cloud of suspicion over the boy, that some who might be predisposed to believe that "those people" are a threat have been given licence to attack him in public forums? Is it surprising that when those same officials accuse the boy or his family of withholding information from them or preventing them from releasing information (insinuating that they have something to hide), that all manner of unflattering conspiracy theories pop up and become gospel because someone read it on Facebook?

Would it have been so difficult to have simply acknowledged that the need to be vigilant means that suspicion will occasionally fall mistakenly on the innocent, express regret for when that happens and live with the consequences? No, they had to try to validate the judgments they made that day by smearing the kid with innuendo. And those who are looking for a reason to condemn this kid lap it up, and publish this sort of slanderous garbage that people feel empowered to publish about a 14 year old boy, that the entire thing was an Islamist conspiracy targeting the mayor. It takes whatever liberties with the facts as are necessary to fit into that narrative, including the claim that the device was intentionally designed to look like a bomb, the authorities believed it was (or might be), that the boy's arrest and detention were predicated on that belief and therefore eminently wise, the overwhelming public condemnation of the boy's treatment by school and police was engineered by the boy's family who bamboozled the media with a misinformation campaign. Even if it were all true, and worse, it wouldn't have negated the obligation to have probable cause to arrest him, to inform him of his rights, to allow him access to counsel, to respect the right to remain silent by avoiding coercive interrogation. Perhaps the police would have been more scrupulous about not violating his rights if they actually believed he had done anything to warrant prosecution - the whole arrest and transfer to juvi, only to release him a couple of hours later seems done more for show than any real belief that a crime had been committed. What could they have learned in the short time he was in custody that they didn't already know before arresting him, or could not have looked into if they had put off arresting him until they learned more? Was it some sort of Scared Straight tactic because he didn't demonstrate appropriate contrition for failing to anticipate the paranoid over-reactions of a couple of teachers who are clearly wound too tight?