A Sudanese court on Thursday found a British teacher guilty of insulting Islam and sentenced her to 15 days in prison followed by deportation, a defence lawyer said.
Gillian Gibbons (54) was charged after a member of staff at her school reported her to the authorities for allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad.
"She was found guilty of insulting religion and the sentence is 15 days [in jail] and deportation," the defence lawyer said after the trial in a Khartoum courtroom which lasted less than a day.
While Gibbons’ case was being heard, Sudanese authorities just outside the court gave a man about 20 lashes with a stiff leather whip, metres away from where the British consul, Russell Phillips, was sitting waiting on a chair. What offence the victim had committed was not clear.
Teachers at the school say that calling the teddy bear Muhammad, the name of the Prophet of Islam, was not her idea in the first place and that no parents objected when Unity High School sent parents circulars about a reading project that included the teddy bear as a fictional participant.