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Hatred Charge Strains Britain-Sudan Relations

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By KEVIN SULLIVAN, The Washington Post

Published: November 29, 2007

LONDON - Authorities in Sudan formally charged a British schoolteacher Wednesday with inciting religious hatred for allowing her primary school students in Khartoum to name a teddy bear Muhammad. The move escalated diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a statement that he was "surprised and disappointed" at the charging of Gillian Gibbons, 54, of Liverpool, who faces up to 40 lashes and six months in prison if convicted.

Officials said Foreign Secretary David Miliband would summon the Sudanese ambassador "as a matter of urgency" to discuss the prosecution.

"This is a disgraceful decision and defies common sense. There was clearly no intention on the part of the teacher to deliberately insult the Islamic faith," Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said in a statement urging Sudan to release Gibbons from her "shameful ordeal."

Several analysts said the Sudanese government could be pressing the teacher's case as leverage against the intense criticism from Britain and other Western countries over its handling of the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region. It is "clear that this is a government that likes to distract people," one British official said on condition of anonymity.

The official noted that on Tuesday, the top U.N. peacekeeping official reported to the Security Council that the Sudanese government was blocking efforts to deploy a U.N.-backed peacekeeping force in Darfur.

Friends and co-workers of Gibbons, who was arrested Sunday, have said she meant no insult to Islam. They said the boy who named the bear was named Muhammad and chose it because of his affection for the prophet.

The Sudanese government released a statement Wednesday from the nation's top Muslim clerics calling for Gibbons to be punished according to the nation's sharia, or Islamic, law.

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