An anti-terror officer told The Daily Mirror that Samantha Lewthwaite, who has become known as the White Widow, is personally responsible for over 400 murders since she quickly rose up the ranks of Somalian radical Islam group al-Shabaab.
“She is an evil person but a very clever operator,” he claimed.
Officials believe she orchestrated the massacre of 148 people at Garissa University College in Kenya. Witnesses said the gunmen specifically slaughtered the Christians. Al-Shabaab conducted that massacre only a few days after militants seized a hotel in Mogadishu, which left 17 people dead. From The Daily Mirror:
She has also launched a recruitment drive of teenagers and women as suicide bombers after bribing their desperate families with as little as £300.
One London resident blew herself up at a hotel in the Somali capital Mogadishu in February killing 25.
And Lewthwaite is believed to have sent brain-washed boys as young as 15 to their deaths as suicide bombers – after they were pumped full of heroin.
However, she rose to international fame after al-Shabaab attacked innocents at the Westgate Mall in Kenya in September 2013. The murderous rampage killed 67 people and injured another 175. Interpol issued an arrest warrant for Lewthwaite in the wake of the attack. They sent the red alert to 190 countries, notifying officials it is a priority to pass along any information on here whereabouts.
“The lady has moved up the ranks. She is one of the most important figures in the terror group,” said a top officer at Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency. “We think this lady is sitting at the right hand of the leader directing attacks. She does not carry out attacks herself as she is too important but is responsible for many, many deaths – hundreds. She uses children to kill for her after giving money to their families.”
Lewthwaite’s parents raised her a Christian, but after they broke up in 1994, her life went downhill and she converted to Islam. She married Germaine Lindsay in 2002. Only three years later, Lindsay detonated a bomb on a train between King’s Cross and Russell Square, leaving 26 dead. Lewthwaite denied any knowledge of the attack and claimed extremists lured her husband into the plot. She vanished in 2009 with her two children.
Lewthwaite is now a mother of four. In 2013, confidential Scotland Yard file stated that she was married to Abdi Wahid, a former officer in the Kenyan Navy. She was found in Kenya in possession of a fake passport and became a terrorist suspect when Kenyan officials found her fingerprints during an investigation into an al Qaeda plot against Western tourists. This led officials to believe she was working with the Somalia group al-Shabaab, an offshoot of al Qaeda. The Mombasa police gave her the nickname “White Widow”; it would not be her last brush with the law.
Jermaine Grant, her accused accomplice in the planned 2011 attack, is currently on trial in Mombasa. Scotland Yard counter-terrorism detective Robert Garrick testified yesterday and said the police found sexy lingerie at her Kenyan safe house along with her birth certificate. He said there were plenty of pink and red lingerie in her room.
The Daily Mail also published pictures of her residence in South Africa. She received a South African passport under the name Naledi Pandor, but the neighbors knew her as Natalie Faye Webb and said she lived there for three months. Officials reported she 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.
Now authorities believe she underwent plastic surgery, changed her hair color, and lost weight. The Mirror also claims she “escaped death in March when she had just left a terrorist camp” when bombed it.
In May 2014, The Daily Mirror reported she married a third time. This time she married Hassan Maalim Ibrahim, also known as Sheikh Hassan, who is a warlord. The marriage offers her more “protection by her new husband’s heavily-armed relatives.” At that time, witnesses spotted her Baidoa.
“Her in-laws will treat her very well as she is now one of them and part of one of the large clans,” claimed one security official. “Samantha is in a heavily guarded village in a no-go area for outsiders. But we’re sure she’ll move around which is why she needs to get in with the family. At the moment she hardly leaves her grass thatch house. She wears black socks and gloves and hijab to cover her white skin so spies won’t see her. Samantha has given herself great protection with this marriage.”
The Somalian authorities believe she lives in Haaway in southern Somalia, which is controlled by al-Shabaab.
“Lewthwaite comes to Hassan when she wants to hide out,” another source told the Mirror. “She is protected in no-go areas by his clan and she often poses as a camel herder. She is dressed all in black robes and gloves so her white skin does not give her away. It is thought she only sees her children rarely and does not take them with her on the run.”
Somali and British officials have shared intelligence related to the whereabouts of the White Widow. They are said to be determined to capture her, according to official statements.
“The SAS [Special Air Services] are ready to get her or we are ready to call in a drone strike against her,” said the Somali spy chief. “We will get her eventually. We know she has surrounded herself with other Britons, her own people as her Somali language is not so good. They are her lieutenants and bodyguards.”
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