Houston: A Muslim teenager arrested in the US for bringing to school a homemade clock that was mistaken for a bomb is moving to Qatar for studies, his family has said, a day after he met President Barack Obama.
Ahmed Mohamed, 14, a ninth-grader who became an Internet sensation after the incident, has accepted an offer from the Qatar Foundation to study at 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.
Ahmed’s family said the foundation would fund his high school and undergraduate education. “I really enjoyed my time at Education City, where I met other kids like me who are part of the Young Innovators Program,” Ahmed said in a statement about time he spent in Qatar this month.
“Qatar was a cool place to visit. I loved the city of Doha because it’s so modern. I saw so many amazing schools there, many of them campuses of famous American universities. “The teachers were great. I think I will learn a lot and have fun, too.”
Ahmed’s family said announced its decision to move to Qatar a few hours after Ahmed visited the White House for an astronomy night hosted by Obama. The Texas boy was arrested on September 14 when he showed a teacher at his school his homemade clock, which the teacher feared was a bomb. No charges were filed, but his detention provoked widespread accusations of racial profiling, sparking a larger discussion of Islam, immigration and ethnicity.