Teen Arrested Over Homemade Clock To Visit UN

By Lisa Maria Garza

DALLAS (Reuters) -- A Texas teenager who became a global sensation after he was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school that was mistaken for a bomb will be meeting foreign dignitaries at the United Nations this week, a family friend said on Tuesday.

Ahmed Mohamed, 14, a Muslim student who dabbles in robotics and attended a Dallas area high school, touched off a social media firestorm with many seeing his the arrest as being tied to his religion.

He also won support from President Barack Obama who personally invited him to the White House for an astronomy night and Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who said, "having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest."

Mohamed, a bespectacled ninth grader with a penchant for wearing NASA T-shirts, attended Google's science fair on Monday at its Mountain View campus in California.

He will be going to New York on Wednesday with his family for the visit to United Nations, according to Alia Salem, executive director of the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations. Details of the visit were not immediately available.

The boy's social schedule has been draining, his father told the Dallas Morning News, saying his son has not been eating or sleeping well.

The father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, also told the paper his son does not feel comfortable returning to MacArthur High School, where the incident happened, and will withdraw from the school district.

The district said that Ahmed and his two siblings have officially withdrawn.

Ahmed Mohamed was accused of making a hoax bomb, handcuffed and questioned. He received a three-day suspension from the high school over the clock he put together to impress his new classmates and teachers.

No charges were filed and police said they would review the decisions officers made in his arrest.

Police did not call out the bomb squad and the school was not evacuated.

(Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Sandra Maler)