Ahmed Mohamed, the Texas teenager whose dissembled clock led to accusations he’d brought a “hoax bomb” to school, will have his 15 minutes of fame reach a crescendo Monday when he will be President Barack Obama’s special guest at the White House for a “White House Astronomy Night.”
But only a few days before hanging out with the President of the United States, Mohamed was paling around with another president of a country: Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
While visiting Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, Mohamed and his father were special guests of al-Bashir at the Presidential Compound.
Remember that #ClockBoy 'Ahmed Mohamed', that everyone fawned over? Here he is posing with the Butcher of #Sudan. pic.twitter.com/rH7tuV6wbY
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 17, 2015
Photographs of the three smiling, arms around one another, circulated the Internet. Disturbingly, al-Bashir is wanted for war crimes for allegedly ordering the genocide in Darfur that led to the deaths of at least 400,000 people during the last decade.
Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Hassan al-Sufi, has twice run for the presidency of Sudan.
Ahmed has been tweeting his trip to the Middle East, calling Sudan “home.”
I am coming home, tell the world I am coming home #sudan pic.twitter.com/DEO0acpYtN
— Ahmed Mohamed (@IStandWithAhmed) October 13, 2015
And going to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
#Mecca with my family. pic.twitter.com/r2cbeR4CKx
— Ahmed Mohamed (@IStandWithAhmed) October 10, 2015
Ahmed tweeted while in Sudan, but did not tweet anything about his meeting with the “Butcher of Darfur.”