Look at the pictures, the “clock” was intentionally made to look like a bomb and I haven’t seen any justification concerning why he should bring it to school.
School officials said they became suspicious after interviewing the student saying his overall stance was passive-agressive and evasive.
I have no idea what this kids intentions were. Looks like he disrupted class with an unknown device, an instigation occurred and he was released thereafter.
That being said, when I look at the picture I see a microcontroller, LCD output screen, ac power and battery power. The pencil box is being used to mount the LCD (on the lid) and the microcontroller and battery in the main body. If he added a temperature sensor he could have a device that displays the time and temperature!
You can buy these, and many more, components on the internet for less than $20. Many people such as myself make a hobby out of creating things using these components. I’ve put together simple light/temperature/pressure sensors that record the ambient conditions throughout my house. Everyone of them have displays, circuit boards and wires mounted in off-the-shelf housings like pencil boxes. So if wires and circuits boards look like bombs to you, I would suggest you do not look inside a computer, handheld calculator, your thermostat or any other electronic device. What should scare you is the presence of an EXPLOSIVE substance. I don’t see anything like that in the picture.
And the alarm went off while hidden in his backpack.
Oops says the kid.
Testing successful says I.
You’re right. Although there are far to many cases of schools going ape with “zero tolerance” policies, this isn’t one of them. Sweet young Ahmed deliberately built a possibly fake bomb timer (could have been real, without the detonator and explosives that would have completed the bomb) and brought it to school in a pencil case just to see what kind of “Islamophobia” he could provoke. The authorities were entirely right to stop him and it’s really sad he isn’t being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.