It began with one student and an Arabic newspaper. He raised the front page, which carried a blurred, pixellated photograph of Gillian Gibbons, above his head and launched his tirade. “In the name of Allah the most compassionate and merciful,” he shouted, “we invite all people in the world to take Islam and we need from our Government to dismiss this teacher from Sudan.” One by one members of the crowd at the Khartoum University campus began to join in, each in turn picking up the paper and shouting abuse.

If officials at the British Embassy and in the Sudanese Government had hoped that they could keep a lid on the public discontent and do a private deal to get Ms Gibbons home to Liverpool, their strategy seemed in peril.

With little public interest in the English primary school teacher and the teddy bear she had named Mohamed, Ms Gibbons’s colleagues had hoped that the matter would never reach court and that she might be freed without a fuss. Yesterday, however, Sudanese newspapers, radio and television woke to her story and Ms Gibbons was charged later with insulting Islam.

In a fiery editorial, the pro-Government Akhir Lahza (Last Moment) newspaper demanded that one of Osama bin Laden’s associates give evidence at her trial. It said that Hassan al-Turabi, once seen as the Islamic brain behind the Government and the man who invited bin Laden to live in Khartoum during the 1990s, should be called as an expert witness.

As the rhetoric was ratcheted up, fears rose of mass demonstrations against Ms Gibbons after Friday prayers. Members of a moderate Sufi sect spent the day leafleting Khartoum’s Arab market in front of the city’s Great Mosque, urging the faithful to protest. “What has been done by this infidel lady is considered a matter of contempt and an insult to Muslims’ feelings and also the pollution of children’s mentality as an attempt to wipe their identity,” the leaflet said. It called on a million people to take to the streets after prayers tomorrow.

Ms Gibbons, a former deputy head teacher from Liverpool, spent yesterday locked in a cell at a police station in a suburb of Khartoum. Her toilet is a hole in the ground; her window a small, barred opening high in the wall. She looked tired and pale as she was escorted across the courtyard with a blanket across her shoulders to meet British consular officials.

She was arrested on Sunday at Unity High School, a British-run school favoured by the Sudanese elite. Colleagues say that she was guilty only of an innocent mistake after allowing her class of six and seven-year-olds to name the class teddy bear Mohamed, after one of the most popular pupils.

Ms Gibbons’s estranged husband, Peter, said that the family were extremely upset but awaiting confirmation that they could fly to Khartoum. “She is the innnocent party in all this and would never want to cause offence to anyone,” he said, from his home in Liverpool. “Gillian is the most gentle soul you could ever wish to meet.”

Professor Eltyeb Hag Ateya, the director of the Khartoum University Peace Research Institute, said that the notion of naming a bear was alien to most Sudanese. “People are angry because the bear does not exist in Sudanese folklore,” he said. “It is not seen as a nice thing that children carry around. If you call someone a bear they will be angry, just as if you have called someone a camel in England.”

Ms Gibbon’s plight moves to Khartoum’s courts today when she is due to appear before a judge who will decide whether there is a case to answer. As the demonstration on the campus wound down, a group of young men huddled over a sheet of paper drafting an angry statement on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Elsheikh El Nour, a veterinary scientist, summed up their position. “If she made an innocent mistake and did not mean Muhammad the Prophet there is no problem,” he said, sipping sweet tea. “But if she meant Muhammad the Prophet, this is a big problem for Muslims. She must die.”

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