Lord Ahmed, Britain’s first Muslim peer, is due to meet President el-Bashir of Sudan today in an effort to secure the release of a primary school teacher jailed for blasphemy.

A source close to the Sudanese Government said that it would consider offering Gillian Gibbons a pardon so she could fly home within days.

Ms Gibbons was being held at a secret location last night after hundreds of protesters, some of them wielding knives and ceremonial swords, called for her execution.

From her cell, the 54-year-old teacher from Liverpool said that she was devastated by the offence she had caused. “I would never insult anybody intentionally. People who know me know it’s not in my nature,” she told Kamal Djizoulli, her lawyer.

Mr Djizoulli also revealed that she had told the judge who sentenced her to 15 days in prison that she was desperately disappointed at what had happened. “It’s very sad because I hoped coming here things would go smoothly and safely but now I’m going to have to go home,” she is quoted as saying.

Mr Djizoulli said that he had visited her to give her clothes after she had lost her belongings in the rush to leave Khartoum North Criminal Court on Thursday.

After Friday prayers yesterday, about a thousand people took to the streets in the first demonstration of public anger since Ms Gibbons was convicted of allowing her class of 6 and 7-year-olds to name a teddy bear Mohamed.

They burnt newspapers bearing pictures of Ms Gibbons and called for her to face a firing squad for her crime. They chanted “Shame, shame on the UK,” and “No one lives who insults the Prophet”. Riot police watched as the protesters marched from the Presidential Palace, to Unity High School and then the British Embassy.

Ms Gibbons faced up to 40 lashes or a year in prison under Sudan’s legal code, which is based on British law but modified to include sharia punishments.

Officials at the British Embassy are concerned that her safety is at risk if her location is disclosed. “She has been visited by consular staff and is fine,” a spokesman said, adding that discussions were under way between the two governments.

Friday was always expected to be the flashpoint in Khartoum. Preachers used loudhailers to goad the demonstration into angry Arabic chants of “No tolerance – execution” and “Kill her, kill her by firing squad”.

When a crowd of young men spotted a group of foreign reporters they began slashing their fingers across their throats. Police intervened as they advanced down the road.

Sheikh Abdul-Jalil al-Karuri, the imam of Abu-Shahid mosque and an adviser to President el-Bashir on cultural and religious matters, said that he had told his faithful that 15 days was an insufficient punishment for such a grave offence. “This happened on September 15 at the start of Ramadan, making it even more offensive,” he said.

The Sudanese Government has been happy to encourage antiWestern sentiment in part to resist efforts from the West to lecture Sudan about Darfur and deploy peacekeeping troops in the war-torn region.

Yet there was little reaction elsewhere. Most of the population of Khartoum went about their normal Friday business. The fried fish restaurants of Omdurman were filled with men discussing the previous night’s big football match as they squeezed lemon juice over battered Nile perch. Families spent the morning at home and the afternoon playing in Khartoum’s parks as usual once prayers finished.

Professor Eltyeb Hag Ateya, a director of Khartoum University’s peace research institute, said that the rapid resolution of the case and guilty verdict had reduced anger at the perceived insult to the Prophet. “People now feel it is water under the bridge,” he said.

As armed protesters took to the streets of Khartoum, friends, colleagues, former pupils and a growing international band of Ms Gibbons’ supporters took to the web to demand her release. Dozens of “Free Gillian Gibbons” campaigns have been launched online with thousands pledging their support. Some called for street protests, others to deluge the Sudanese Embassy in London with protest letters, e-mails and teddy bears.

By yesterday evening, the “Free Ms Gibbons” group, hosted by the social networking website Facebook, had attracted more than 2,500 members.

Among them was Ms Gibbons’s daughter Jessica, 27. “Thanks everyone, it means a lot,” she wrote on the group’s message board.

Responding to a member who had suggested that 40 lashes would have been fair punishment for showing a lack of respect for another culture, she wrote: “My mum does respect other cultures or she wouldn’t have wanted to work in Sudan. I’m sure you would feel differently if it was your mum.”

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