SAMANTHA Lewthwaite has emerged as a prime suspect behind the bloodshed in Kenya but who is the 29-year-old woman thought responsible for so much carnage?
Dubbed the ‘White Widow’ by Britain’s media, the mother-of-four has emerged as the prime suspect in the Nairobi massacre.
The widow of suicide bomber Jermaine Lindsay, Lewthwaite is believed to have ordered the Nairobi attack or even led it herself.
Soldiers said a white woman wearing a veil was shouting orders to gunmen in Arabic during the bloody massacre inside the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, the Daily Mail reports.
As soldiers closed in on the terrorists, one said the scene is “all being controlled by this muzungu [Swahili for white] woman. She is ordering them what to do. We are getting closer to them”.
Some survivors say a veiled woman was commanding the al-Shabaab militants as they attacked people in the Nairobi mall while other survivors simply say saw a “white woman” among the hostage-takers.
Police have told reporters that they are still investigating the possibility the woman may have been a hostage dressed in one of the terrorists’ clothes as a “decoy” during the attack which saw Kenyan authorities regain control of most of the four-storey shopping mall.
However Kenyan anti-terror police revealed yesterday that Lewthwaite may be the brains behind the operation to bring terror to the heart of Kenya, the Daily Mail reports.
A Kenyan police source told The Mirror in London that Lewthwaite, now a key member of al-Shabaab, “is target number one” in their investigation.
Al-Shabaab, the militant group which has claimed responsibility for the slaughter, used its official Twitter account @HSM_Press, before it was suspended, to praise Lewthwaite.
“Sherafiyah lewthwaite aka Samantha is a vrave [sic] lady! were happier to have her in our ranks!” they tweeted.
Sherafiyah is the Muslim name now used by Lewthwaite. She is also known to her devoted al-Qaeda fanaticals as dada muzungu which is Swahili for ‘white sister’.
Lewthwaite – who has been on the run for years, flitting between Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania – has avoided arrest by wearing all-concealing Islamic dress.
So how did a bright English girl who loved to gossip about pop music and fancied David Beckham end up marrying a 7/7 bomber and becoming one of the most feared female terrorists in history?
Lewthwaite, the daughter of a British soldier, apparently grew up as normal teenager from a middle-class family in from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire in South East England.
Her dad Andy, 57, was also a builder. Her brother Allan is a carpet fitter. Her family last year said they hadn’t seen her ‘for years’.
She studied religion and politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in Russell Square, London.
When she was 17 she met Jamaican-born British Muslim Lindsay. The Jamaican-born carpet-fitter who grew up in Huddersfield, West Yorks.
Lewthwaite converted to Islam at 18 and married Lindsay two years later, in 2002, in an Islamic ceremony at a terraced house in Aylesbury.
Her family did not attend her wedding to Lindsay, who went on to become one of four suicide bombers who blew up Tube trains and a bus in central London, killing 52 people.
At the time Lewthwaite denied any knowledge of her husband’s plans and police, who believed she was innocent, granted her protection.
She reintegrated herself with her family so well that in 2007 her dad took the whole family to Disneyland Paris, according to The Mirror.
The couple’s first child, Abdullah, is now eight. Their daughter was born two months after the bombings.
According to the Daily Mail, Lewthwaite moved to Kenya with her children in 2007, cutting ties with her family in Britain, and became immersed in East Africa’s Islamic terror networks.
It is believed she joined al-Qaeda in 2008.
She is known to have trained a group of female suicide bombers in Somalia and has been serving as an official spokeswoman for al-Shabaab.
She returned to the UK to give birth to her third child, son Abdur-Rahman Faheem Jamal (Lindsay’s Muslim name), at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in 2009. She used the name Asmaa Shahidah Bint-Andrews.
Not much was known about Lewthwaite’s movements after that but last year the Daily Mail reported that Lewthwaite was believed to have spent time in South Africa and war-torn Somalia before arriving in Kenya in March 2011 using a forged passport.
They also believe she owned three houses in Somalia and was training people to make explosives there.
Then in December 2011 police swooped on a rented Mombasa apartment she shared with London-born Jermaine Grant after being tipped off that the pair were allegedly planning to bomb Kenyan beach resorts.
When Grant was arrested, he allegedly opened up about Lewthwaite to police and told them that her and her husband Habib Ghani had escaped with their children.
When the apartment was raided police found a haul of fuses and 60 rounds of ammunition, including three magazines of bullets for AK-47 rifles under a sofa. They also found automatic rifles, drums of chemicals used by suicide bombers, a laptop and her diary.
In it she said she wanted her children to be suicide bombers.
An intelligence source told The Mirror that agents are studying information provided by Grant, who is accused of possessing explosives and conspiring to carry out bomb attacks.
The Daily Mail reports that in January 2012 police raided another five-bedroom villa, surrounded by a 12ft-high wall, and found more than 60 AK-47 magazines stuffed into a septic tank and a smashed-up laptop.
Police believe the house was chosen because of its proximity to two hotels popular with Britons and Americans, which may have been potential targets, they reported.
The landlord Nelson Korir said the tenant fled after paying Pound700 in rent for three months.
“She had been living there with a man since November 17. They were very private and wouldn’t allow the villa’s staff into the compound,” he told the Daily Mail last year.
In June 2012 Lewthwaite was identified as the woman who had led a group of terrorists to fire grenades into a Mombasa bar, killing three and injuring 50.
She allegedly fired a grenade launcher into the bar, which was full of football fans watching the euro 2012 match between England and Italy on June 24.
According to the Daily Mail, Lewthwaite is now one of al-Qaeda’s main recruiters in East Africa and is an official spokesman for Al Shabaab (The People), the terrorist group behind the horror in Nairobi.
“As well as railing against ‘infidels in the West’, Lewthwaite had previously used a Twitter account to denounce a rival foreign terrorist in the text-speak of a teenager,” the Daily Mail reports.
Lewthwaite is also suspected of being involved in a series of bombings and shootings in Kenya’s tourist areas and has been linked to attacks on the Dorchester and Ritz hotels in London.
A source has told The Mirror “Lewthwaite is the most wanted female terrorist in the world”.
“She has managed to evade capture for two years but she may have finally been killed.”
The source added that Lewthwaite may have plotted the slaughter with the al-Shabaab terror group in revenge for the capture of her right hand man, The Mirror reports.
Interpol, the CIA and detectives from Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command are all involved in finding her.