Sudan Protesters: Execute U.K. Teacher
Teacher Jailed For Naming Teddy Bear "Muhammad" Appeals For Tolerance Towards Muslims
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Angry Mobs Condemn Teacher
As many as 10,000 protestors swarmed the streets of Khartoum, Sudan, many calling for the execution of a British teacher who named a class teddy bear "Muhammad." Richard Roth reports.
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Teacher Sentenced In Sudan
After allowing her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad, British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons has been sentenced by a Sudanese court to 15 days in prison and deportation. Charlie D'Agata reports.
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Teacher Faces Lashing In Sudan
A British teacher was arrested in Sudan after her class named a toy bear "Muhammad." She faces a public whipping and the incident has caused tension with Britain. Charlie D'Agata reports.
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The Sudanese ambassador to the United Kingdom, Omer Mohammed Ahmed Siddig, leaves the Foreign Office in London, where he met with Foreign Secretary David Miliband Thursday Nov. 29, 2007. (AP Photo/Steve Parsons/PA Wire)
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A Sudanese man walks by the Unity High School in central Khartoum, Sudan, on Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007. This elite private school is shut down since one of its teachers, Briton Gillian Gibbons, 54, was arrested on blasphemy charges for letting her students name a teddy bear Muhammad. Gibbons was charged Wednesday and faces up to 40 lashes, six months prison and a fine under Sudan's Islam-based legal code. (AP Photo/Alfred de Montesquiou)
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Gillian Gibbons, 54, was found guilty of "insulting the faith of Muslims" and sentenced to 15 days in jail, followed by deportation, said Ali Mohammed Ajab, a human rights lawyer on the defense team. (AP Photo/PA)
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"One of the things my mum said today was that 'I don't want any resentment towards Muslim people'," her son John Gibbons told The Associated Press. "She's holding up quite well."
Earlier, thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad."
The protesters streamed out of mosques after Friday sermons, as pickup trucks with loudspeakers blared messages against Gillian Gibbons, the teacher who was sentenced Thursday to 15 days in prison and deportation.
They massed in central Martyrs Square, outside the presidential palace, where hundreds of riot police were deployed, although they did not attempt to stop the rally.
"Shame, shame on the U.K.," protesters chanted.
They called for Gibbons' execution, saying, "No tolerance: Execution," and "Kill her, kill her by firing squad."
The women's prison where Gibbons is being held is far from the site, as is the Unity High School where she taught, which is under heavy security protection.
In response to the protests, Gillian Gibbons was moved from the women's prison near Khartoum to a secret location said her chief lawyer Kamal al-Gizouli shortly after visiting her to discuss the verdict.
"They moved this lady from the prison department to put her in other hands and in other places to cover her and wait until she completes her imprisonment period," he said, adding that she was in good health. "They want by hook or by crook to complete these nine days without any difficulties which would have an impact on their foreign relationship."
Some of the protesters, who an Associated Press reporter at the scene said numbered as many as 10,000, carried clubs, knives and axes but not automatic weapons, which some have carried at past government-condoned demonstrations, suggesting Friday's rally was not organized by the government.
The teacher wept in court Thursday as she heard her prison sentence, insisting she never meant to offend. She avoided a much heavier possible punishment of 40 lashes.
The sentence and quick seven-hour trial Thursday were aimed at swiftly resolving the case, which had put Sudan's government in an embarrassing position - facing the anger of Britain on one side and potential trouble from powerful Islamic hard-liners on the other.
The defense said the case was sparked by a school secretary with a grudge. But it escalated as Muslim clerics sought to drum up public outrage against what it called a Western plot to insult Islam's Prophet Muhammad and demanding Gibbons be punished.
The government, which has often touted its Islamic credentials, encouraged past protests over cartoons seen as insulting the prophet published in European papers. But its moves in this case suggested it feared the case could hurt its reputation in the West.
The teacher, Gillian Gibbons, "was in tears" when she testified in court Thursday, a member of her defense team, Abdel-Khaliq Abdallah, told The Associated Press.
"She said that she never wanted to insult Islam" by allowing the children to name the stuffed toy Muhammad, a common name among Muslim men, the lawyer said, speaking outside the courtroom. Media were barred from the chamber.
Gibbons, 54, was found guilty of "insulting the faith of Muslims" and sentenced to 15 days in jail, followed by deportation, said Ali Mohammed Ajab, a human rights lawyer on the defense team. The charge is a lesser offense in the article of the criminal code under which she was tried, which includes several possible charges.
Prosecutors had pressed for conviction on a heavier charge under the same article - inciting religious hatred, which carries a punishment of up to 40 lashes, six months in prison and a fine.
A judge leaving the courtroom confirmed the verdict to reporters, but refused to give his name.
It's just a teddy bear.
Robert Boulos, School directorIn London, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband summoned the Sudanese ambassador after the verdict and sentence. During the 45-minute meeting, Miliband "expressed in the strongest terms our concern at the continued detention of Gillian Gibbons," the Foreign Office said in a statement. Miliband also spoke on the phone with Sudan's acting foreign minister.
Gibbons' supporters in Khartoum were divided over the verdict. Ajab, a human rights lawyer on the defense team, called the ruling "very unfair," blaming "hard-liners trying to make some noise."
But the director of Gibbons' Unity High School, Robert Boulos, said the lawyers hired by the school would not appeal, noting she could have received a heavier sentence. He said Gibbons, jailed since Sunday, has already served five days in prison and would only have to serve 10 more.
The case began with a classroom project on animals in September at the private school, which has 750 students from elementary to high school levels, most from wealthy Sudanese Muslim families.
Gibbons had one of her 7-year-old students bring in a teddy bear, then asked the class to name it and they chose the name Muhammad.
Each student then took the teddy bear home to write a diary entry about it, and the entries were compiled into a book with the bear's picture on the cover, titled "My Name is Muhammad," Boulos said.
But an office assistant at the school, Sara Khawad, complained to the Ministry of Education that Gibbons had insulted the prophet. Khawad testified at Thursday's trial, chief defense lawyer Kamal Djizouri said.
Khawad "was doing this out of revenge against the administration," Djizouri said. He did not elaborate. But the director of the school's Parent-Teacher Association, Isam Abu Hasabu, claimed Khawad had argued with the principal before the incident.
Comparing the Prophet Muhammad - Islam's most revered figure - to an animal or a toy could be insulting to Muslims. But Boulos said that, contrary to earlier reports, no parents had complained.
"It's just a teddy bear," Boulos said.
The government issued orders to clerics not to deliver inflammatory sermons Friday about the case or against foreigners, a senior government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the government had also ordered officials not to discuss the case.
The north of Sudan bases its legal code on Islamic law, and President Omar al-Bashir often seeks to burnish his religious credentials, playing up to his hard-line supporters.
But in Gibbons' case, the government appeared reluctant to let hard-liners steer it into tensions with Britain and the West. Sudan is already facing international scorn and charges of war crimes in Darfur, where the government is waging a brutal fight against non-Muslim rebels, reports CBS News correspondent Richard Roth.
Public pressure by Western governments over the Darfur conflict has eased recently, with a U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force preparing to deploy.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.


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See all 1250 CommentsIt''s a police state.
Gibbons, 54, was found guilty of "insulting the faith of Muslims" and sentenced to 15 days in jail, followed by deportation, said Ali Mohammed Ajab, a human rights lawyer on the defense team. The charge is a lesser offense in the article of the criminal code under which she was tried, which includes several possible charges.
Gibbons had one of her 7-year-old students bring in a teddy bear, then asked the class to name it and they chose the name Muhammad.
Hmmm the children named the teddy bear are they being tried or the parents of the children?
So why are the Sudanese not calling for their trial, the children and parents of the children along with their execution?
To hell with all these barbarians and all their followers. And you never hear any Muslims speaking out against this kind of logic.
because they are zealot''s beliefs which practice no tolerance.
Love of bigotry,
Love of intolerance,
Love of hypocrisy,
Love of theocracy,
Love of gender inequality,
Love of jihad(holy war),
Love of suicide bombers,
Love of car bombs,
Love of kidnappings,
Love of beheadings,
Love of hijackings,
Love of death and destruction to any and every human on earth(especially fellow Muslims)!
If any religion is stuck in the DARK AGES, it''s fundamentalist Islam for sure.
I quite agree with the abandonment of Africa. There is nothing there worth putting up with this ***. Get everything we have out of there and leave them to fend for themselves.
I''ve never been more proud to be an infidel!
What reputation ? The country of Sudan is just another backwater hole in the ground sinking deeper and deeper in to the abyss of Islamic fundamentalism with hate as it main source of energy.
[9.14] Fight them, Allah will punish them by your hands and bring them to disgrace, and assist you against them and heal the hearts of a believing people."
Go ahead, read it in context too, does not sound much better. This is a social virus of the human mind. Destructive memes.
THE KIDS NAMED THE BEAR,
not her.
Hmmmm....
They live in a fantasy world of 70 virgins (what do the women get when they die?) after death.
"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all law-religions, or religions established by law." -- Thomas Paine
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Posted by ToolMangler
With Sudan or Iran?
www.au.org
As a nation, we need to stop supporting this kind of nonsense and let natural selection run its course. Given the means, these mutant throwbacks from the dark ages will use their own anger and intolerance against themselves until none remain. Then, and only then, will humans have made a significant step toward progress.
In the course of evolving to where we are today, millions of species and sub-species have vanished from the planet. In the grander vision of a truly peaceful future, in a thousand years will anyone notice if every Muslim was eradicated? Not a chance. It would be merely a blip in history.
But, if we allow the Muslim faith to continue and prosper, then the fate of humanity will be seriously challenged and we risk seeing Muslims the world over turn on us all like a rabid dog on its owner.
Arm them all! Men, women, and children! Let nature do what it does: strike down those who go against the improvement of the species.
This is not a case of a few extremists - this is all Muslims everywhere. As mentioned by another poster, if this is only a select few then where are the Muslim protesters against this paranoid and erratic behavior? You''re either with us or you''re against us.
And since you''re not with us, you ARE against us.
Posted by Lavnac
They get rewarded with the opportunity to exist outside the Muslim world.
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