USA Africa Dialogue Series - UK Terrorist, 'White Widow Linked to Nyanya Bombing (huhuonline.com)

Subject: UK Terrorist, 'White Widow Linked to Nyanya Bombing (huhuonline.com)

UK Terrorist, 'White Widow Linked to Nyanya Bombing

British international terrorist, Samantha Lewthwaite otherwise known as 'White Widow,' has been linked to Monday's

tragic bomb blast in Nyanya, Abuja, Nigeria's Federal Capital Territory.

Though no group has officially claimed responsibility for the dastardly act, United Kingdom security sources,

are speculating that the bombing may have been a revenge attack for the death of Lewthwaite's mentor --

al-Shabaab terror chief Sheikh Abubakar Shariff Ahmed also known as Makaburi -- two weeks ago.

The 30-year-old is believed to be in Nigeria, Kenya or Somalia, where Islamist terror networks are closely linked,

making it far easier for her to evade detection than in Europe.



According to a senior security source in the UK, agents across Africa were on high alert after the assassination

of Makaburi, by the UK and US funded Kenyan Anti-Terror Police Unit (ATPU) 14 days ago. The source asserted

that White Widow and her associates "wanted revenge."

"Makaburi was always believed to be at the very top of the hierarchy of al-Shabaab", the security source who

preferred to be anonymous said. "Intelligence suggests that he introduced Samantha Lewthwaite to many

influential figures within the al-Shabaab network. He guided her on her path to Jihad. His murder was seen

as yet another act of war."



Lewthwaite, daughter of a British Army soldier, is the most wanted woman in the world. She is connected

with seven murders and the Westgate shopping mall siege that resulted in 67 deaths and 200 severe injuries

in Nairobi, Kenya, in September 2013.



"The world's most wanted woman was reportedly caught at a checkpoint in Nigeria just six months ago, but

managed to bribe her way to freedom", the UK senior security source said. "It is believed that she commands

enormous loyalty and power as a white convert female jihadist, having proved her worth in previous attacks."

Lewthwaite has been on the run since January 2012. She got the 'White Widow' nickname after husband

Germaine Lindsay blew himself up while bombing a London Tube train in what is now referred to as the

7/7 bombings of 2005 where 56 people were killed and more than 700 were injured.



According to a UK newspaper, Daily Star, Lewthwaite, from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, UK, is believed

to have widely used the alias 'Natalie Webb' and travelled on a forged South African passport. She is now

officially being hunted by 190 countries and is one of the most wanted international fugitives in the world.

The paper revealed that Police seized her laptop in 2011 and found details of how to build bombs and many

evidences that she was planning multiple terrorist attacks both in Africa and the West. She has also been

linked to grenade attacks at non-Muslim places of worship in Africa and a terrorist attack on western

football fans watching Euro 2012 in the Jericho bar in Mombasa, South Africa.

According to Head of Interpol, Ronald Noble, There is a global 'tripwire' for this fugitive and all

190 Interpol member-countries are aware of the danger she embodies worldwide.

...................................................................................





'White Widow' in spotlight over Nairobi siege September 25, 2013 02:47 AM By Katy Lee<http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Katy-Lee.ashx>





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Kenyan authorities said Lewthwaite was traveling on a fake South African passport.



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LONDON: A Briton nicknamed the "White Widow" is in the spotlight after a Kenyan minister said a British

woman was among the Islamist attackers who shot dead dozens of people at a Nairobi shopping mall.

Samantha Lewthwaite, a 29-year-old Muslim convert, was married to Germaine Lindsay, one of four suicide

bombers who attacked the London transport network in July 2005, killing 52 people.

The mother-of-three has been on the run in East Africa for around two years and is wanted by Kenyan police

for alleged involvement in a terror plot.



Kenyan officials have given contradictory statements about whether a British woman may have been involved

in the attack on the Westgate mall that has left at least 62 people dead.

Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed told U.S. broadcaster PBS that a British woman was among those to blame,

along with two or three American men.



"And she has, I think, done this many times before," Mohamed said, without identifying her.

But Kenyan Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku earlier denied that any of the insurgents were women, saying

some male attackers "had dressed like women."

The British government refused to be drawn on suggestions one of its citizens was among the attackers.

The daughter of a British soldier, Lewthwaite professed herself appalled when her Jamaican-born husband

detonated a backpack full of explosives and blew himself up on a London Underground train on July 7, 2005,

killing 26 people.



She was pregnant with their second child at the time.

"I totally condemn and am horrified by the atrocities which occurred in London," she said, describing Lindsay

as "a good and loving husband and a brilliant father, who showed absolutely no sign of doing this atrocious crime."

Lewthwaite had met Lindsay in an Internet forum when she was 17, having converted to Islam two years earlier.

Described as a bubbly teenager, school friends said she had an ordinary upbringing in the market town of Aylesbury,

northwest of London.



"She was an average British, young ordinary girl," said Raj Khan, a local councillor who knew the family.

"She didn't have very good confidence," he added.

Little is known about what happened to Lewthwaite in the years after the London bombings.

Kenyan police released wanted notices saying she was traveling on a false South African passport under

the name Natalie Faye Webb, accompanied by her three children, a girl and two boys.

The children would be now roughly aged between 7 and 12.



South African authorities said they were carrying out a "thorough investigation" into the passport issue.

Media reports have linked her to plotting or masterminding attacks across the Horn of Africa, though with

little evidence of her role.

Raffaello Pantucci, a terror expert at Britain's Royal United Services Institute, said Lewthwaite had acquired a

"semi-mythical status."

"I don't think we've had any concrete evidence of her being involved in this incident," he said. "But the fact of

her being mentioned in this context is not surprising because of her connections."

Nairobi's Daily Nation newspaper quoted security sources saying that extremists on the Kenyan coast call her

"Dada Muzungu" - "white sister" in Swahili - and that she slipped through a dragnet in Mombasa in January

2012, when forces raided villas where she was believed to have been hiding.



"Police have received hundreds of calls from people offering clues and have interviewed dozens who might

have met her" in connection with the mall attack, Nairobi's The Standard newspaper said Tuesday.

But it added: "Very few individuals have ever testified to meeting Samantha face-to-face."

Lewthwaite has also been linked to Jermaine Grant, an alleged British Islamist currently on trial in Mombasa

for possessing explosives.



Rumours abound that Lewthwaite is behind the Twitter handle @MYC_Press - Kenya's radical Muslim Youth

Center - which regularly comments on Kenyan extremism, as well as entering into a war of words with rival Islamists.

American Islamist Omar Hammami - who fought in Somalia but was killed by former Shabab comrades this month -

in April scoffed via Twitter that she was just "a girl in Kenya".

MYC_Press in turn replied: "Sam Lewthwaite thinks ur [you are] a irritating obnoxious contemptible little Muj

[mujahedeen] PRAT."



MYC_Press - which has been notably silent since the attack began Saturday - also told AFP in April that Lewthwaite

had "returned to Luton," a town outside London and close to where she grew up.


A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on September 25, 2013, on page 10.

Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/International/2013/Sep-25/232480-white-widow-in-spotlight-over-nairobi-siege.ashx#ixzz2z2o550Nw
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)







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