Foreign Office advised peer not to go to Sudan

Published on Sunday 9 December 2007 01:05

A MUSLIM peer who travelled to Sudan to try to negotiate British teacher Gillian Gibbons' release was initially told by the Foreign Office not to go, he said yesterday.

"I got a telephone call at 9pm on Thursday night and I called the Foreign Office immediately and the response unit, actually, they advised me not to go," Lord Ahmed said.

He was told Foreign Secretary David Miliband would not make a final decision until the following day so he made his own arrangements for a visa and flight to Sudan.

He said the Foreign Office said they did not recommend people travel to Khartoum, and stressed he went there as an "individual parliamentarian" and not as a Government representative.

Gibbons, 54, was imprisoned after she allowed her seven-year-old pupils to name a teddy bear Mohammad.

She was pardoned by President Omar al-Bashir after Lord Ahmed and Conservative Baroness Warsi travelled to Sudan.