Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- A U.K. teacher jailed in Sudan for allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad returned to Britain following her release from prison.

``I'm very glad to be back,'' Gillian Gibbons said today at a televised news conference at London's Heathrow airport. ``I'm looking forward to seeing my family and friends and having a good rest. It has been an ordeal.''

Gibbons, who is in her 50s, smiled and hugged her son John before reading a statement to reporters. She was pardoned yesterday following requests from Britain to commute her sentence of 15 days in jail for insulting religion and inciting hatred.

Her class of 6- and 7-year-old children at a school in Sudan named the teddy bear in September during a project on animals and their habitats. The name of the Muslim prophet was the most popular choice. Several parents complained to authorities that the use of the name had insulted Islam.

U.K. Muslim lawmakers Nazir Ahmed and Sayeeda Warsi accompanied Gibbons on the flight back to Britain. Ahmed and Warsi traveled to Sudan to meet President Umar al-Bashir to appeal for Gibbons to be released.

Gibbons said she was treated well in prison and that she had found the Sudanese people to be ``extremely kind and extremely generous.'' She said she hadn't intended to cause offense in the classroom.

``I'm just an ordinary, middle-aged primary school teacher,'' she said. ``I went out there to have a bit of an adventure and got a bit more of an adventure than I bargained for.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Lysaght in London at blysaght@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 4, 2007 04:19 EST