TIMELINE - Teacher pardoned in teddy bear row

LONDON - British teacher Gillian Gibbons was pardoned by Sudan's president on Monday after she was jailed for insulting Muslims by allowing her students to name a teddy bear Mohammad.

Here is a brief chronology of events:

November 26 - Gibbons, 54, is arrested by Sudanese police and accused of insulting Islam's Prophet by letting her class at the Unity High School in central Khartoum name the bear Mohammad.

- The school's director says that 20 out of 23 members of the class had voted for the name. The children had been allowed to take the bear home at weekends and write a diary about it.

November 27 - A 7-year-old Sudanese boy says he named the teddy bear Mohammad because it was his own name and had not been thinking of the Prophet. He said that the majority of his class had agreed with him about the name.

Nov 28. - Sudanese authorities charge Gibbons with insulting Islam, inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs. The charges carried a possible year in jail or 40 lashes.

- Foreign Secretary David Miliband summons Sudan's ambassador in London to express the government's disappointment with the decision.

November 29 - Gibbons is jailed for 15 days for insulting Islam but cleared of other charges. She is also ordered to be deported on her release.

November 30 - Hundreds of Sudanese Muslims, some brandishing ceremonial swords, take to the streets of Khartoum demanding death for Gibbons.

- Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams calls the sentence an "absurdly disproportionate response" to a minor cultural faux pas.

December 2 - British Muslim peers Baroness Sayeeda Warsi and Lord Ahmet say they will meet Sudan's President Hassan al-Bashir to ask him to free Gibbons.

December 3 - Al-Bashir grants Gibbons a pardon after the meeting with Warsi and Ahmet, and she is handed over to British officials. She apologises for causing any distress and says she had not intended to offend anyone.

(Reporting by Michael Holden)