London(DPA) : The release in Sudan of a British school teacher jailed for naming a teddy bear Mohammed was Monday greeted with relief in Britain where the end of the controversy was hailed as a victory for “common sense”.
Gillian Gibbons, 54, was handed over to the British embassy in Khartoum, following a pardon from President Omar al-Bashir, after serving just over a week of a 15-day jail term for “insulting religion”.
She was expected to return to her home town of Liverpool, in north-west Britain, later Monday.
Before her release, Gibbons issued a statement in which she said “sorry” for her actions, adding that she had not meant to offend anyone.
“I have great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone and I am sorry if I caused any distress,” she said.
The incident had strained relations between Britain and Sudan and, beyond that, between the West and Islam, commentators in London said.
Within a short time of her release being announced, up to 40 people demonstrated outside the British embassy in Khartoum, criticising the decision.
In Dundee, Scotland, British police were Monday investigating an incident in which the words “teddy bear” were scratched on three cars owned by Asian families.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, while saying that he was “delighted and relieved” at the news, also said the arrest and conviction of Gibbons was “completely unacceptable” and had caused “outrage around the world”.
Speaking in Liverpool, her son John thanked the government for “all the work behind the scenes”. But he added: “The family won’t be 100 percent happy until she’s on the plane.”
Gibbons was arrested in Khartoum on Nov 25 and sentenced to 15 days in jail last Thursday for “insulting religion” after allowing pupils at a fee-paying Christian charity school to name a toy bear Mohammed – after one of them.
She had already spent several days in pretrial detention.
In her statement, she said she was “very sorry” that she would no longer be able to teach her class of 6-and 7-year-olds at Unity High School.
It emerged during her one-day trial Thursday that another member of staff reported Gibbons to the Ministry of Education over the teddy bear naming, which happened in September.
The news of her release came after a weekend of intense lobbying by Baroness Sayeeda Warsi and Lord Nazir Ahmed, both Muslim members of the House of Lords (Upper House of Parliament) in Britain.
After extending their unofficial visit to Khartoum, they were granted a meeting with al-Bashir Monday.
Warsi said the incident over the teddy bear had led to an “unfortunate, unintentional, innocent misunderstanding”.
But she also said that attitudes in Khartoum had “hardened” during the talks, and that hard-liners were demanding a retrial for the teacher.
Ahmed said: “As British Muslims, we are proud to have secured the release of Gillian Gibbons.”
It was a point taken up by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who, while expressing his gratitude to the mediators, said their intervention had shown that “UK opinion spans all religions”.
In Britain, the mainstream Muslim organizations backed the government stance that Gibbons had made an “innocent mistake” and demanded her freedom.
But in Khartoum several hundred angry demonstrators, some wielding knives and sticks, criticized the “leniency” of the verdict last Friday, while some asked for her to be “killed”.
A spokesman for the Sudanese embassy in London, Khalid al-Mubarak, who had earlier described the furore over the teddy as “a storm in a teacup”, reacted with relief to the news.
“Congratulations. I am overjoyed,” he said. “She is a teacher who went to teach our children English and she has helped a great deal and I am very grateful.
Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, described the release as “wonderful news”.
“Gillian should never have been arrested in the first place, let alone held in jail. She had done nothing wrong,” he said.