British teacher facing 40 lashes reported by work colleague

She entered amid chaotic scenes, outside an offender was being whipped as part of his punishment, and riot police surrounded the area. Media and school colleagues were banned from the court and police even tried to stop her own lawyer from entering.

A statement from Mrs Gibbons, a mother-of-two from Liverpool, was read to the court in which she explained the incident and underlined that her seven-year-old students picked the name.

The judge also ordered the prosecution to produce the person who originally complained against Mrs Gibbons and she was revealed as Sara Khawad, an office assistant at the Unity High School.

Earlier reports said pupils’ parents had objected to the teddy, but school director Robert Boulos said today he had been told more recently by police the complaint came from a member of staff.

“I would be surprised if any parents complained to the ministry without coming to me first, and no one came to me,” he said, insisting that the school’s parents support Gibbons.

Mrs Gibbons’ chief defence lawyer Kamal Djizouri scuffled with a police cordon before he was allowed in. He briefly came out to say three prosecution witnesses were to be called before Mrs Gibbons and defence witnesses could take the stand.

Episcopalian Bishop Ezekiel Kondo, Mrs Gibbons’ employer, also outside the courtroom, said he was there “as a witness to testify that she never intended to insult any religion” and dismissed rumours the school had fired her.

Prosecutor-General Salah Eddin Abu Zaid said earlier today that Mrs Gibbons can expect a “swift and fair trial” under the Sudanese judicial system and that she had been provided with a legal defence team, as well as a private cell, mattress and blanket in detention.

“We don’t think this will be a long trial, because there is only one article of the penal code to handle,” Abu Zaid said.

The country’s top Muslim clerics have pressed the government to ensure that she is punished, comparing her action to author Salman Rushdie’s “blasphemies” against the Prophet Mohammed.

Mrs Gibbons was arrested at her home in Khartoum on Sunday accused of naming the bear after Islam’s prophet. Mohammed is a common name among Muslim men, but the parents saw applying it to a toy animal as an insult.

In Britain Foreign Secretary David Miliband met Sudan’s ambassador to discuss Mrs Gibbons’ case.

A spokesman at the Sudanese Embassy in London said he did not think she would be convicted but that “in the unlikely event of conviction, there is the process of appeal also.”

“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. “There is no worry on that front at all. She will be very well represented.”

Officials in Sudan’s Foreign Ministry have tried to play down the case, calling it an isolated incident and predicting Mrs 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 that touted itself as creating an Islamic state.

The north of the country bases its legal code on Islamic Sharia law, and al-Bashir often seeks to enhance his religious credentials.

Officials at Unity High School, where Mrs Gibbons taught, say she was teaching her seven-year-old students about animals and in September asked one girl to bring in her teddy bear. Gibbons then asked the students to pick names for the bear and they voted to name it Mohammed.

Each student then took the bear for a weekend to write a diary entry about what they did with the bear, and the entries were compiled into a book with the bear’s photo on the cover and the title “My Name is Mohammed,” in what teachers in Britain said was a common exercise.

The school, founded in 1902 to provide British-style education to about 750 students from elementary through high school, has been closed since Mrs Gibbon’s arrest. Most students are Muslims from affluent Sudanese families.