British teacher leaves Sudan after presidential pardon

December 3, 2007 (LIVERPOOL, KHARTOUM) — Gillian Gibbons’ family gathered with beer, wine and flowers Monday, waiting to welcome home the British teacher jailed by Sudan for allowing her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad.

One woman carrying heavy bags struggled past reporters outside the Liverpool home of Gibbons’ son after it was announced the teacher had been pardoned and left Sudan.

“It’s been a strange old week, very stressful and particularly bad for the family, but now she’s coming home, fingers crossed,” said her son, John Gibbons. “If this week has taught me anything, it is that anything can happen.”

Earlier, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose country has had poor relations with Sudan for several years mainly due to the conflict in Darfur, said he was “delighted and relieved” to hear that Gibbons would be released shortly.

Sudan’s influential Council of Muslim Scholars had urged the government on Sunday not to pardon Gibbons, saying it would damage Khartoum’s reputation among Muslims around the world.

About 50 demonstrators shouting “There is no God but Allah” and “We will die for the Prophet Mohammad” handed over a petition to the embassy about the affair.

“Retracting this light sentence … would wound the sensibilities of the Muslims in Sudan,” Council Spokesman al-Sheikh Mohammad Abdel Karim said.

Many Sudanese said they thought it was an innocent mistake which could be forgiven after an apology.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband praised the 54-year-old teacher.

“I did say to her that it must have been very tough over the last week and she did say, ‘Well, it was prison but it wasn’t too bad a prison,’ or words to that effect,” he said. “She’s shown very good British grit.”

Sudan’s ambassador in London, Khalid al-Mubarak, said he was “overjoyed” that Gibbons was pardoned by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, ending a case that set off an international outcry and angered many moderate Muslims.

“What has happened was a cultural misunderstanding, a minor one, and I hope she, her family and the British people won’t be affected by what has happened,” he said.

The envoy called a demonstration in Sudan’s capital on Friday in which some participants called for Gibbons’ execution “an argument from the fringe.”

Gibbons’ case was the latest in a tense relationship between the West and Sudan’s hard-line leader, who has been accused by the U.N. of dragging his feet on the deployment of peacekeepers to the country’s war-torn Darfur region.

She was freed after two Muslim members of Britain’s House of Lords met with al-Bashir and the teacher sent the president a statement saying she didn’t mean to offend anyone with her class project.

“I have a great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone,” Gibbons said in the statement, which was released by al-Bashir’s office and read to journalists by British Baroness Sayeeda Warsi.

“I am looking forward to seeing my family and friends, but I am very sorry that I will be unable to return to Sudan,” Gibbons wrote.

Al-Bashir insisted Gibbons had a fair trial, in which she was convicted of insulting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, but the president agreed to pardon her during the meeting with the British delegation, said Ghazi Saladdin, a senior presidential adviser.

Gibbons left Sunday on Monday evening, British Embassy spokesman Omar Daair told The Associated Press. She was believed to be on a flight that was expected in London on Tuesday morning.

The show of outrage in Sudan puzzled many in the West.

Hard-line Muslim clerics denounced Gibbons, saying she intentionally aimed to insult Islam. A day after her Thursday trial, several thousand Sudanese massed in central Khartoum to demand that Gibbons be executed. Many of the demonstrators carried swords and clubs.

But it was never clear how deep anger over the incident really flowed among Sudanese, although the affair was influenced by the ideology that al-Bashir’s Islamic regime has long instilled — a mix of anti-colonialism, religious fundamentalism and a sense that the West is besieging Islam.

Gibbons, who was arrested Nov. 25, was sentenced to 15 days in prison and deportation under Sudan’s Islamic Sharia law for having the teddy bear project for her class of 7-year-olds at the private Unity High School. She could have been punished with up to 40 lashes, six months in prison and a fine.

In the project, she had a student bring in a teddy bear, then asked her pupils to vote on a name for it. They chose Muhammad, a common name among Muslim men. The students took the bear home individually to write diary entries on it, which were then compiled into a book with the bear’s picture on it and the title “My Name is Muhammad,” school officials said.

Gibbons’ defenders said the project was a common one in British schools.

The trial was sparked when a school secretary complained to the Education Ministry that Gibbons aimed to insult Islam’s prophet.

The private English-language school, with elementary to high school levels, was founded by Christian groups, but 90 percent of its students are Muslim, mostly from upper-class Sudanese families.

Lord Nazir Ahmed, part of the British delegation that met with al-Bashir, said the case was an “unfortunate misunderstanding” and stressed that Britain respected Islam. He added that he hoped “the relations between our two countries will not be damaged by this incident.”

The two British peers, Warsi and Lord Ahmed who obtained her pardon from president al-Bashir accompanied her as she left Khartoum airport, heavy with security after hundreds protested on Friday, demanding she be killed.

Gibbons apologised after the pardon announcement for any discomfort she had caused to the people of Sudan.

“I have been in Sudan for only four months but I have enjoyed myself immensely. I have encountered nothing but kindness and generosity from the Sudanese people,” she said, in a statement read by British Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, one of the peers who met Bashir.

“I have great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone. I am sorry if I caused any distress.”

Many Muslim groups in the West had sharply criticized Gibbons’ arrest. On Monday, Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, welcomed her pardon.

“Gillian should never have been arrested in the first place, let alone held in jail. She had done nothing wrong,” he said. “It will be wonderful to see her back in the U.K. I am sure she will be welcomed by both Muslims and non-Muslims after her quite terrible ordeal at the hands of the Sudanese authorities.”

Muslim scholars generally agree that intent is a key factor in determining if someone has violated Islamic rules against insulting the prophet.

But hard-liners in Sudan touted the incident as part of a Western plot to undermine Islam, echoing accusations from controversy raised early in the year by the publication of cartoon caricatures of the prophet in European newspapers.

Al-Bashir’s opponents in Sudan have said his government likely let the Gibbons case move forward to stir up anti-Western anger at a time when he is resisting allowing Western peacekeepers in the Darfur peacekeeping force. He has said he will bar any Scandinavians from the force since newspapers in their countries ran the prophet cartoons.

(AP/Reuters)