IRVING, Texas -- The father of Ahmed Mohamed, the then-14-year-old student arrested and accused of bringing a hoax bomb to an Irving high school last year, has filed a defamation lawsuit.
Fox News and The Blaze, as well as multiple media personalities that appeared on the two networks, are named in the lawsuit. Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne is also named as a defendant.
Mohamed made headlines when he was arrested at school in September of 2015 after school authorities mistook an alarm clock for a homemade bomb.
Court documents filed last week accuse Fox News and The Blaze of libel for what the family calls “false and defamatory statements.”
Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro is named in the suit for comments made in an Oct. 19, 2015 Fox News broadcast. That segment was later put on YouTube and titled “Ben Shapiro exposes Clock Boy narrative.”
Comments made by The Blaze host Glenn Beck and guest Jim Hanson, the executive vice president of the Center for Security Policy, in a Sept. 22, 2015 broadcast were also mentioned.
CNN conservative commentator Ben Ferguson is named for an appearance in a Nov. 23, 2015 Fox broadcast, in which he called the alarm clock incident a “money grab.”
The suit asks the media outlets to retract statements made on their programs alleging Mohamed was part of a terrorist plot.
The lawsuit reads:
“The broadcasts aired by Fox and the Blaze are the very definition of ‘yellow journalism.’ To broadcast inaccurate, biased and sensationalized falsehoods in the guise of “news” is an offense, not just to the victims of the defamatory statements, but to the public. The public has been misled into believing that the Mohameds are terrorists who plotted to have the Irving police wrongfully arrest a teenage boy for bringing an alarm clock to school. These broadcasts irresponsibly fan the flames of fear and anger toward Muslims and immigrants. Each of these Defendants should be required to retract their falsehoods and broadcast the truth.”
Van Duyne is also named in the 21-page lawsuit for calling the alarm clock a “hoax bomb” and not correcting statements made during televised interviews. The lawsuit also refutes her claim that Mohamed was “not forthcoming” during an investigation into the incident.
“Demand is hereby made of each Defendant for correction/retraction of the statements set forth below, to be published in the same manner and medium as the original publications and to include an acknowledgment that the original publications were false and erroneous,” the lawsuit reads. “Otherwise, Plaintiff sues for general and special damages in an amount in excess of the minimum jurisdictional limits of this Court.”
The amount the family is seeking in damages was not specified.
Several additional people are named in the background portion of the lawsuit, which claims that a history of discrimination existed in Irving ISD. The suit alleges Mohamed’s sixth-grade vice principal, “Mr. Nguyen,” had a “racial bias” and that he “unfairly disciplined” Mohamed during his grade school years.
A federal investigation was launched into allegations that students have been harassed and discriminated against at Irving ISD schools.
