Samantha Lewthwaite, also known as the “White Widow,” is the world’s most wanted woman, and it is now being revealed where she hid in South Africa. The home she lived in is neat and normal, which allowed her to blend in while working with radical Islamist terror groups.
Lewthwaite gained a South African passport under the name “Naledi Pandor”; her neighbors reportedly knew her as Natalie Faye Webb. The country canceled the passport in 2011 and it has not been used since February 2011. The government claims they did not knowingly harbor Lewthwaite.
Residents in the Johannesburg suburb of Bromhof claim she lived at this house for three months. She had accrued around $8,800 in debt, including $3,000 to two leading South African banks and $1,000 to two clothing stores, and worked as an IT specialist at a halal meat pie factory. One neighbor said Lewthwaite was always dressed in a hijab and her children never played outside with other kids. The neighbor said she saw her for three to four months and no one really knew her.
Lewthwaite’s former husband, Germaine Lindsay, blew himself up and killed 26 people on a London train in 2005. At first she condemned the bombing, but she vanished a few years later with her children. Officials gave her the nickname “White Widow.” She turned up in Kenya and is wanted by authorities for a foiled plot to blow up Western tourists in December 2011. Her fingerprints were found at a villa that contained the same materials her husband used in the 2005 bombing. Her accomplice in the foiled plot, Jermaine Grant, is on trial; Scotland Yard detectives said they found sexy lingerie at her hideout with Grant in Mombasa.
She is also suspected of taking part in the Westgate Mall massacre, in which 10 to 15 members of the radical Islamic terrorist group al-Shabaab stormed the Israeli-owned mall and said they only wanted to kill non-Muslims. They held many hostages over three days before the Kenyan Defense Forces defeated them; soldiers and doctors found a horrific scene inside in the aftermath. They claimed victims had their eyes gouged out and children were shoved in freezers with knives inside them. As of now, the death toll is 61 civilians, but the number is expected to go up.
Witnesses claim a white woman was among the attackers, but al-Shabaab and the police both said all the terrorists were male. However, suspicions are still high that Lewthwaite had something to do with the attack. Interpol issued an arrest warrant for her by request of Kenyan officials this week. The red alert was sent to 190 countries with instructions to pass along any information on her whereabouts.