NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec. 3 — The British teacher jailed in Sudan for allowing her 7-year-old pupils to name a class teddy bear Muhammad was pardoned on Monday by Sudan’s president and left for England later that night. Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir made the decision after meeting with two Muslim members of Britain’s House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament.
The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, said he was “delighted and relieved” at the news and that “common sense has prevailed.”
The teacher, Gillian Gibbons, was sentenced to 15 days in jail last week for insulting Islam and was supposed to be released on Dec. 10. Under Sudan’s penal code, she could have been jailed for six months and whipped 40 times. On Friday, hundreds of angry Sudanese in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, protested what they considered a lenient punishment and called for her to be put to death.
Meanwhile, British officials had been ratcheting up the pressure on the government to release Ms. Gibbons, 54, saying that she had made an innocent mistake. Muhammad is one of the most common names in the Muslim world, but it is also the name of Islam’s holy prophet.
In a way, Mr. Bashir was caught in the middle — or at least the Sudanese government presented it that way. He risked provoking the ire of conservative Muslims in his country — among his key supporters — by letting Ms. Gibbons out early. But the case hit his desk at a time when United Nations officials and Western governments have been vociferously complaining that the Sudanese government is obstructing an expanded peacekeeping force for Darfur, the war-torn region of western Sudan.
Mr. Bashir may have calculated that he did not need another headache.
“This was all political,” said Kamal al-Gizouli, Ms. Gibbons’ defense attorney. “The government did this to show they are tolerant. They don’t need any more problems with the world and the international media.”
President Bashir said in a statement that the reason why Ms. Gibbons was released early was because she was a guest of Sudan.A Sudanese official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters said the government struggled with what to do. But in the end, what persuaded Mr. Bashir to pardon Ms. Gibbons were the concerns raised by the British Muslim officials that “this whole incident could fuel Islamophobia,” the Sudanese official said, “and President Bashir didn’t want that.”
Ms. Gibbons, who flew out of Khartoum around 9 p.m. Monday night en route back to England, responded with an effusive apology.
“I have been in Sudan for only four months but I have enjoyed myself immensely,” she said in a statement. “I have encountered nothing but kindness and generosity from the Sudanese people. I have great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone.”
The teddy bear ordeal began in September when Ms. Gibbons, who taught at one of Khartoum’s most exclusive private schools, started a project on animals and asked her class to suggest a name for a teddy bear. The class voted resoundingly for Muhammad.
As part of the exercise, Ms. Gibbons told her pupils to take the bear home, photograph it and write a diary entry about it. The entries were collected in a book with a picture of the bear on the cover and titled “My Name Is Muhammad.” Most of her students were Muslim and the children of wealthy Sudanese families.
The government said that when some parents saw the book, they complained to the authorities. Ms. Gibbons was arrested on Nov. 25 and went to trial last Thursday. After an all-day hearing, the judge seemed to reach for a compromise by finding her guilty of insulting Islam but handing her a relatively light sentence.
On Monday, most Sudanese took the news matter-of-factly.
“I’m glad she was released,” said Sami al-Zuber, a lawyer in Khartoum. “There are so many people in Sudan who have no work except to instigate such issues.”