British teacher jailed for 15 days in Sudan

November 29, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — A British teacher accused of insulting Muslims after her class called a teddy bear Mohammad was found guilty and jailed for 15 days, a defence lawyer said on Thursday.

Gillian Gibbons, 54, was ordered to be deported after she had completed her sentence.

“She was found guilty of insulting religion and the sentence is 15 days (in jail) and deportation,” defence lawyer Ali Ajib said after the trial in a Khartoum courtroom, which lasted less than a day.

In London, the British Foreign Office said it was “extremely disappointed” with the verdict. “The Sudanese ambassador will be called in this evening to explain this decision,” a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

Robert Boulos, head of Unity high school where Gibbons worked, said: “We are happy with the verdict. It is fair. There were a lot of political pressures and attention.”

He added: “We will be very sad to lose her.”

Asked what he thought of the verdict, the head of Gibbons’s defence team, Kamal al-Jazouli, said: “It was not bad.”

Gibbons was charged on Wednesday with insulting Islam, inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs because of the toy’s name. Under Sudan’s penal code, she could have faced 40 lashes, a fine, or up to one year in jail.

In court, judge Mohammed Youssef listened to two accounts — one from school secretary Sarah Khawad, who filed the first complaint about the teddy bear’s name, and one from the official who has been investigating the case, court sources said.

Teachers at the school say that calling the teddy bear Mohammad, the name of the prophet of Islam, was not her idea in the first place and that no parents objected when Unity High School sent parents circulars about a reading project which included the teddy bear as a fictional participant.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband had earlier said in a statement “We believe this was an innocent misunderstanding.”

Sudan has had poor relations with Britain, the United States and most European countries for several years, mainly because of their disagreements over how to handle the conflict in the Darfur region in western Sudan.

The U.N. Security Council, of which Britain is a permanent member, wants to deploy a joint U.N.-African force to Darfur to restore order and help displaced people return home. Khartoum reluctantly agreed but is disputing many details.

“I’m utterly disappointed with this decision. We have been calling on the Sudanese authorities to show leniency, that this was a case of an innocent oversight, a misunderstanding, and there was no need for this to … be escalated …” said Ibrahim Mogra of the Muslim Council of Britain, the country’s largest Muslim organisation.

“We are very hopeful that perhaps the appeals process will be more successful”, he added.

“The question that I would want the judiciary there and the authorities to ponder over is: How does this help the cause of Islam? What kind of message and image are we portraying about our religion and our culture?”

(Reuters)