By ANDREW WILKS

Last updated at 13:32 09 December 2007

The teacher imprisoned in the Sudan for naming a teddy bear Mohammed has told how she feared being raped by her guards during her incarceration.

Gillian Gibbons, who was arrested when a school secretary complained to the authorities two months after the stuffed toy was named by pupils at Unity High School in Khartoum, said her greatest worry was that her guards would "teach the blaspheming white woman a lesson".

"That was my worst terror - that they would come in and teach me a lesson by raping me or that they would hit me," she said.

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Recalling the eight days she was held in custody, Ms Gibbons described her shock immediately after her arrest on November 25.

She was thrown into an open-air cell with grey-tiled walls, a squat toilet and bars across one side of the room and the ceiling.

"It was filthy, there were ants all over the floor and in the corner there were rat droppings," she said.

"There was a light shining into my yard that attracted all the mosquitoes, so I stood there and got bitten to death."

She added: "I was panicking and I was crying. I didn't actually sleep all night. I was so distressed, so uncomfortable and so cold that at four in the morning I just paced round and round trying to keep warm.

"It felt like this was happening to someone else. It was just mad, just surreal."

The 54-year-old mother of two also told how she felt like she had been "run over by ten juggernauts" when a sharia court convicted her of insulting the prophet and sentenced her to 15 days in jail.

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But displaying a wry sense of humour, Ms Gibbons, from Liverpool, recounted a farcical moment in court when the teddy was introduced as evidence. "This clerk of the court got this carrier bag and produced this bear with a flourish like a rabbit out of a hat," she said.

"He put it down on the table in front of us and it flopped over and the prosecution sat him up... It made me laugh but it wasn't funny, you know what I mean?"

Ms Gibbons was pardoned by Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir last Monday following lobbying by Muslim peers Baroness Warsi and Lord Ahmed. She was driven to the airport and boarded a plane to Dubai with the two British politicians.

Sitting amid the splendour of the first class cabin, she was finally able to relax and toast her freedom with a vodka and orange on top of a meal of lobster tails and potatoes.

"I'm not a drinker but I felt obliged to have an alcoholic drink even though I was with Lord Ahmed and Baroness Warsi, who are Muslims. I was a bit embarrassed about it but I thought I'd earned that vodka."

Despite her ordeal, Ms Gibbons harbours no hostility or regrets, describing her time in the Sudan as "wonderful" and blaming herself for the "misunderstanding".