Samantha Lewthwaite: The white widow

She was a “shy” girl from Buckinghamshire but the name Samantha Lewthwaite is once again being linked to a global atrocity.

The media have linked her to the Kenyan shopping centre attack.

Speculation has been fuelled by the Kenyan foreign minister who said one of the militants from the Somali-based al-Shabab group was a British woman.

And suspicion was heightened when international crime agency Interpol issued a wanted persons notice for her arrest.

But the warrant – requested by the Kenyans – relates to separate terror charges dating from 2011 and is not linked to the Nairobi siege.

There has been no confirmation of Ms. Lewthwaite’s involvement, either as an attacker, organiser or fundraiser. Al-Shabab has denied that any women were involved.

Whitehall officials continue to advise caution about reports linking her to the attack, says the BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner.

A photo from a fake South African passport alleged to belong to Samantha Lewthwaite under an assumed name.

Her notoriety though, confirmed by the Interpol warrant, is not in doubt.

Ms. Lewthwaite, 29, was first thrust into the spotlight after the July 7 bombings in London in 2005, as the widow of bomber Germaine Lindsay, who killed 26 people when he blew up a Piccadilly Line Tube train near King’s Cross.

A Muslim convert dubbed the “White Widow” by much of the media, she has no terrorism record in the UK but was on the run from Kenyan Police before the Westgate attack, allegedly using a South Africa passport over suspected links to a terrorist cell that planned to bomb the country’s coast

Interpol’s red notice is a recognition that she is now considered an international threat, not just someone who should be regarded as a passport fraudster, says BBC home affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani.

The notice says Ms. Lewthwaite is “wanted by Kenya on charges of being in possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit a felony dating back to December 2011.”

After the July 7 attacks, Ms. Lewthwaite condemned her husband’s actions as “abhorrent”, saying trips to radical mosques had “poisoned his mind.”

“How these people could have turned him and poisoned his mind is dreadful,” she told The Sun. “He was an innocent, naive and simple man. I suppose he must have been an ideal candidate,” she said.

But not long after the attack she disappeared.

She was known to be in Kenya and, last year, officials said she had fled to Somalia and the police were hunting a woman who used several identities, including hers.

Lewthwaite attended the Grange School in Aylesbury.

She spent much of her life in the Buckinghamshire town of Aylesbury, although her very early years were spent in Northern Ireland.

Born to English soldier Andy Lewthwaite – who met and married Christine Allen while serving in Northern Ireland during the 1970s – she spent her childhood on the Whyte Acres estate in Banbridge, County Down.

Ms Lewthwaite was still at primary school when her family moved to Aylesbury, where they lived in a modest terraced house. Her parents separated in 1995.

Raj Khan, an Aylesbury councillor who has known her for decades, told the BBC she was an average girl.

Samantha Lewthwaite married July 7 bomber Germaine Lindsay in 2002

“I knew her when she was a child,” he said. “She was very innocent, lacking confidence, shy and very easy to get on with. She was a follower not a leader.”

It is understood she has had little contact with relatives in Northern Ireland, including her 85-year-old grandmother Elizabeth Allen, since her conversion to Islam.

 - Culled from www.bbc.co.uk

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