“Teddy Bear Teacher” Freed
The efforts of two Muslim members of Britain's House of Lords have resulted in the pardoning and release from prison of Gillian Gibbons, the so-called Teddy Bear Teacher. She was released to British diplomats earlier today and is to be sent back to safety in Britain.
President Omar al-Bashir's pardon of Gillian Gibbons allowed her to leave prison before the end of her 15-day sentence, and ended a diplomatic tangle, resulting in what British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called a victory for common sense.
Bashir pardoned Gibbons, 54, of Liverpool, after meeting with two Muslim members of Britain's House of Lords, Nazir Ahmed and Sayeeda Warsi, who had traveled to the predominantly Muslim African nation to lobby for her release.
"This is a case which is unfortunate, unintentional, innocent misunderstanding," Ahmed told reporters in Khartoum after the pardon was announced. Wire services reported from Khartoum that Gibbons was released to British diplomats around 7 a.m.
Gibbons's case caused international outrage and strained relations between Britain and Sudan, whose government is under intense international pressure over the crisis in its Darfur region. Government officials and many British Muslim leaders said they believed Sudan's prosecution of Gibbons was a reaction to that pressure, particularly the upcoming arrival of a U.N.-backed peacekeeping force in Darfur.
A civilized nation would never have prosecuted her in the first place. That the "spontaneous" street demonstrations calling for Gibbons' death just happened to be made up of government workers assigned to protest makes the "humanitarian" gesture of the Sudanese government transparently fraudulent.
World news | Gaius Monday, 3 December , 2007
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Wake up America-My Toy Yorkie: muahmmad — Monday, 3 December , 2007 @ 11:34 am
By Maggie, Monday, 3 December , 2007 @ 9:51 am
For all Ms. Gibbons’s turmoil over this (really) non-incident (teddy bear naming), I will be even more outraged if I see her sporting some sort of “head-covering” and spouting off all “understanding” and “self-incriminating (”Oh, we the West need to be more sensitive of these people”) in any near future interviews (as has been the case when someone has been ‘imprisoned’ or held hostage by these radicals)
By martian, Monday, 3 December , 2007 @ 10:25 am
When you look at the whole case and realize that the entire thing has been engineered, from beginning to end, by the Sudanese government, you have to wonder, what was the point? Did they really need to try that hard to make themselves look like a bunch of uncivilized religious fanatics mentally stuck in the 7th century? They really didn’t have to work at it to make themselves look bad, their handling of Darfur has done that very handily. If they weren’t out to make themselves look even worse than they already did on the world stage, again, I have to ask, what the heck was the point?!
By Gaius, Monday, 3 December , 2007 @ 10:30 am
Probably done for internal consumption, although it is not unreasonable to think that they also wanted to engineer something that made them look merciful - which it didn’t.
I lean more toward an internal move to prop themselves up with the people.
By Maggie, Monday, 3 December , 2007 @ 11:05 am
martian and Gaius -
Me thinks the Sudanese government might have just wanted to get out of her “teaching contract” without dealing with her “teachers’ union” …??? /sarc :- )