Only Sudan’s president has the power to pardon a British teacher sentenced to 15 days imprisonment for insulting Islam, said the justice minister today as British Muslim peers pushed to meet the Sudanese leader.

The chief defence lawyer of the British teacher convicted by a Sudanese court for insulting Islam expected her to be pardoned with the visit of a delegation of British Muslims today.

British teacher Gillian Gibbons was tonight found guilty of inciting hatred after she let her Sudan school pupils name a teddy bear Mohammed.

The Chelsea striker has a lot to look forward to in 2006 - including a World Cup with war-torn Ivory Coast. David Shonfield reports.

VIOLENT mobs surged again into the streets of Sudan’s capital yesterday, a day after 36 people died in riots sparked by the death of vice-president and former southern rebel leader John Garang.

A three-year-old boy who was the only survivor of an air crash in Sudan that killed 115 people was flown to Britain today for surgery.