Teacher in Sudan Teddy Bear Dispute Not Yet Charged, U.K. Says
November 27 2007A British teacher under arrest in Sudan accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad hasn't yet been charged, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said today.
Gillian Gibbons allowed her class of six and seven-year-old children to name a teddy bear used in a school project for the prophet. This occurred in September after the class studied animals and their habitats. Later, several parents complained to the authorities that the project had insulted Islam.
Gibbons, 54, is now in a Khartoum jail, facing potential charges of ``insulting faith and religion,'' under Article 125 of Sudanese law, a spokeswoman for the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
``I feel very sorry for what has happened to Gillian Gibbons,'' Brown told reporters at his office in London. ``I understand that she hasn't been charged with anything.'' British Embassy staff are in contact with Gibbons, he said.
Under Islamic Sharia Law it is seen as an insult to Islam to attempt to make an image of the Prophet. British consular staff are conducting negotiations to try to secure her release. A report published in June by the International Commission of Jurists identified ``gross human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law'' in Sudan.
Catherine Wolthuizen, chief executive of pressure group Fair Trials International, said outsiders should be ``mindful'' of the will of nations to set their own laws no matter what other countries think of them.
``We all hope upon investigation that there isn't enough evidence to support charges,'' Wolthuizen said in an interview. ``Hopefully that will result in Ms. Gibbons being released.''
Gibbons ``was arrested in the school grounds where she lives over the weekend,'' Louise Ellman, the lawmaker representing Gibbons' home area of Liverpool, northwestern England, said in an interview. ``She is in a cell, she is upset, but she is being treated properly.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Kitty Donaldson in London at .