Briton Leaves Sudan After Pardon in Teddy Bear Case

LIVERPOOL, England — Gillian Gibbons's family gathered with beer, wine, and flowers yesterday, waiting to welcome home the British teacher jailed by Sudan for allowing her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad.

One woman carrying heavy bags struggled past reporters outside the Liverpool home of Ms. Gibbons's son after it was announced the teacher had been pardoned and left Sudan.

"It's been a strange old week, very stressful and particularly bad for the family, but now she's coming home, fingers crossed," her son, John Gibbons, said. "If this week has taught me anything, it is that anything can happen."

Foreign Secretary David Miliband praised the 54-year-old teacher. "I did say to her that it must have been very tough over the last week, and she did say, 'Well, it was prison, but it wasn't too bad a prison,' or words to that effect," he said.

Sudan's ambassador in London, Khalid al-Mubarak, said he was "overjoyed" that Ms. Gibbons was pardoned by President al-Bashir of Sudan, ending a case that set off an international outcry.

"What has happened was a cultural misunderstanding, a minor one, and I hope she, her family, and the British people won't be affected by what has happened," he said. The envoy called a demonstration in Sudan's capital on Friday in which some participants called for Ms. Gibbons's execution "an argument from the fringe."

Ms. Gibbons's case was the latest in a tense relationship between the West and Sudan's hard-line leader, who has been accused by the United Nations of dragging his feet on the deployment of peacekeepers to the country's war-torn Darfur region. She was freed after two Muslim members of Britain's House of Lords met with Mr. Bashir and the teacher sent the president a statement saying she didn't mean to offend anyone with her class project.