Sudan Convicts Brit Over "Muhammad" Bear

British teacher Gillian Gibbons has been convicted of inciting religious hatred for letting her pupils name a teddy bear Muhammad and sentenced to 15 days in prison and deportation from Sudan, one of her defense lawyers said Thursday.

"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.

Gibbons, 54, was arrested Sunday after complaints to the Education Ministry that she had insulted Prophet Muhammad, the most revered figure in Islam, by applying his name to a toy animal.

The maximum penalty for the charge, which has attracted world wide attention was 40 lashes and six months in prison.

The case sparked tensions between Sudan and Britain, the country's former colonial ruler. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband was meeting Thursday with Sudan's ambassador to inquire about the case.

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.

Officials at the Unity High School, a private school where Gibbons teaches, say the teddy bear was part of a class project to teach her 7-year-old pupils about animals. She asked the students to name the bear and they chose the name Muhammad, a common name among Muslim men.

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," according to the school director, Robert Boulos.

But some parents complained, accusing Gibbons of insulting the Prophet Muhammad, the most revered figure in Islam, by applying his name to a toy animal, the officials say. Gibbons, 54, was arrested Sunday. The school, which has about 750 students from elementary through high school, most from affluent Sudanese Muslim families, has been closed since.

Sudan's top Muslim clerics on Wednesday demanded the government punish her, saying she intentionally insulted the prophet and comparing her action to the "blasphemies" of author Salman Rushdie. 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.

Gibbons' chief defense lawyer Kamal Djizouri scuffled with police in the tight cordon around the courthouse before he was allowed in. He briefly came out to say the proceedings were postponed for half an hour as the plaintiff had not yet shown up. He said he still did not know who the plaintiff was.

Djizouri told The Associated Press he would argue her case on the basis of Islamic Sharia law to show there was "absolutely no intention to insult religion, and for blasphemy to take place there must be an insult."

"There is a very big difference between the holy character of Prophet Muhammad and the name Muhammad given to a person," he said, pointing out that it is the most widespread first name in the Arab world. "When somebody is named Muhammad by his parents and then turns out to be a thief, is it an insult to religion to say, 'That Muhammad is a thief'? Of course not."

Hearings in Sudan are usually public, but the cordon barred entry, including to British diplomats who had come to observe. "It's up to the judge, but from a consular point of view, we would like to be present," British Consul Russell Philipps said amid a crowd of about 100 people, mostly media, trying to get in.

Episcopalian Bishop Ezekiel Kondo, Gibbons' employer, also barred, said he was there "as a witness to testify that she never intended to insult any religion." He denied reports that the school had fired Gibbons.

Sudan's Foreign Ministry has sought to play down the case, and the embassy in London initially predicted she would not be charged. Embassy spokesman Khalid al Mubarak said Thursday he did not expect her to be convicted.

But there were signs the case could become a rallying case for Islamic hard-liners. Wednesday evening, a pickup truck drove through Khartoum with loudspeakers calling on Sudanese to defend their religion and hold a protest Friday.

Some Muslim clerics in Khartoum now claim the teacher and the teddy bear are part of a Western plot aimed at Islam in Sudan, reports Roth.

In the first reports on the case in Sudanese papers Thursday, some articles echoing the angry statements by the clerics - though others said Gibbons should be acquitted.

The semiofficial Assembly of the Ulemas, or Islamic clerics, said Wednesday that Gibbon's action was "another ring in the circles of plotting against Islam" - citing Rushdie and insulting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad run in European newspapers.

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 President 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 the cartoons.