LONDON — A British teacher jailed in Sudan for letting her students name a teddy bear Muhammad as part of a writing project arrived home today after being pardoned and said she was "very upset to think that I might have caused offense to people."

Gillian Gibbons told reporters after arriving at London's Heathrow Airport that she was looking forward to seeing her family and friends.

Gibbons, 54, jailed for more than a week, was freed after two Muslim members of Britain's House of Lords met with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and the teacher sent the president a statement saying she didn't mean to offend anyone with her class project.

The incident was the latest in a tense relationship between the West and Sudan's president, an Islamic hard-liner who has been accused by the United Nations of dragging his feet on the deployment of peacekeepers to the country's war-torn Darfur region.

Al-Bashir insisted Gibbons had a fair trial, in which she was convicted of insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad, but the president agreed to pardon her during the meeting with the British delegation.