KHARTOUM, Sudan - A British teacher in Sudan was convicted Thursday of inciting religious hatred for letting her pupils name a teddy bear Muhammad, and she was sentenced to 15 days in prison and deportation to Britain, one of her lawyers said.
Gillian Gibbons could have received 40 lashes and six months in prison in the case.
In London, the Foreign Office said it was “extremely disappointed with the sentence,” adding that Foreign Secretary David Miliband summoned the Sudanese ambassador to explain the verdict.
In Washington, the White House called it an outrage. "Any one looking at this at the face would have to conclude this is outrageous," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters.
Gibbons, 54, was arrested Sunday after complaints to the Education Ministry that she had insulted the prophet Muhammad, the most revered figure in Islam, by applying his name to a teddy bear.
“The judge found Gillian Gibbons guilty and sentenced her to 15 days jail and deportation,” said Ali Mohammed Hajab, a member of her defense team.
Robert Boulos, director of the Unity High School where Gibbons taught, noted that since she had already spent five days in prison, she would have to serve only 10 more.
“It’s a very fair verdict, she could have had six months and lashes and a fine, and she only got 15 days and deportation,” Boulos said. He added that the verdict would not be appealed.
Gibbons is expected to serve her sentence in the Omdurman women’s prison near Khartoum.
According to NBC News, Gibbons started teaching in Sudan only a short time ago.
British diplomats barred from court
Gibbons, in a dark blue jacket and blue dress, was not handcuffed when she walked into the courtroom in Khartoum, according to reporters who were briefly allowed inside but were subsequently dismissed.
Although hearings in Sudan are usually public, the police cordon barred British diplomats and others from entering.
Gibbons’ chief defense lawyer, Kamal Djizouri, scuffled with a tight police cordon before he was allowed in.
Djizouri said he would argue her case based on Islamic Sharia law and show there was “absolutely no intention to insult religion, and for blasphemy to take place there must be an insult.”
Gibbons was teaching her pupils, who are around age 7, about animals, and asked one of them to bring in her teddy bear, according to Robert Boulos, a spokesman for Unity High School in Khartoum.
Gibbons asked the students to pick names for it and they proposed Abdullah, Hassan and Muhammad, and in September, the pupils voted to name it Muhammad, he said.
Each child was allowed to take the bear home on weekends and write a diary about what they did with it. The diary entries were collected in a book with the bear’s picture on the cover, labeled, “My Name is Muhammad,” he said. The bear itself was never labeled with the name, he added.
Muhammad is a common name among Muslim men, but giving the prophet’s name to an animal would be seen as insulting by many Muslims.
Episcopalian Bishop Ezekiel Kondo, Gibbons’ employer said he was at the court “as a witness to testify that she never intended to insult any religion,” but he was also barred from entering.
The case set up an escalating diplomatic dispute with Britain, Sudan’s former colonial ruler. British and American Muslim groups also criticized the decision.
In London, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said, "There is an innocent misunderstanding at the heart of this, not a criminal offense."
A spokesman at the Sudanese Embassy in London had earlier said he did not think Gibbons would be convicted.
“Mrs. Gibbons has consular support, the British Embassy has one of the best solicitors in the country, whom I know personally,” said Khalid al Mubarak.
Clerics pushed for punishment
Officials in Sudan’s Foreign Ministry have tried to play down the case, calling it an isolated incident and initially predicting Gibbons could be released without charge.
But hard-liners have considerable weight in the government of President Omar al-Bashir, which came to power in a 1989 military coup saying it wanted to create an Islamic state.
The country’s top Muslim clerics pressed the government to ensure that she is punished, comparing her action to author Salman Rushdie’s “blasphemies” against the Prophet Muhammad.
The British novelist was accused of blasphemy by many Muslims for his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses,” which had a character seen as a reference to the prophet. Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a religious edict calling for Rushdie’s death.
The north of Sudan bases its legal code on Islamic Sharia law, and al-Bashir often seeks to burnish his religious credentials.
Last year, he vowed to lead a jihad, or holy war, against U.N. peacekeepers if they deployed in the Darfur region of western Sudan. He relented this year to allow a U.N.-African Union force there, but this month said he would bar Scandinavian peacekeepers from participating because newspapers in their countries ran caricatures of Prophet Muhammad last year.
The Associated Press and NBC News' Dawn Friesen contributed to this report.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22007049/?GT1=
10547
|
