Teenage student, who was arrested in Texas after taking a homemade clock to school, accepts scholarship offer in Doha
The 14-year-old Muslim boy, Ahmed Mohamed, who was arrested for bringing science project to his Texas school, is leaving the US to study in Qatar after receiving scholarship.
Ahmed shot to fame after he was handcuffed while wearing a t-shirt with the US space agency NASA’s logo last month for bringing a homemade clocks to school as his teacher mistook his homemade clock for a bomb.
Mohamed accepted an offer from the Qatar Foundation to study in its Young Innovators Programme.
“This means, that we, as a family, will relocate to Qatar where Ahmed will receive a full scholarship for secondary and undergraduate education,” his family said in a statement.
The family announced the move on Tuesday, just one day after Mohamed met Barack Obama at the White House and discussed the youngster’s ambition to work on Nasa projects for humans to reach Mars. He posted a photo on Instagram earlier Tuesday of a hug with President Obama and the caption “SO HAPPY, I CANT BELIEVE THAT I MET THE #president of THE #UNITEDSTATES!!!”
“We are going to move to a place where my kids can study and learn, and all of them being accepted by that country,” Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, told the Dallas Morning News by phone as the family was boarding a plane in Washington to take them back to Texas.
The statement said the family has been “overwhelmed by the many offers of support” since Ahmed’s arrest Sept. 14 at his school in Irving, a Dallas suburb. The family said it accepted an offer from the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development to join its Young Innovators Program.
