Now White Widow is connected to British-born Al Qaeda bomb maker: Fugitive wife of 7/7 terrorist was key link between Pakistan and East African extremists

• Mother-of-four from Buckinghamshire converted to Islam at 17-years-old
• Married to London bomber Germaine Lindsay before disappearing in 2007
• Believed to be working for experienced Al Qaeda bomb maker Habib Ghani
• She has built up web of contacts between Somalia, Pakistan, UK and Africa

British-born Samantha Lewthwaite

By Rebecca Evans and Duncan Gardham

The fugitive ‘white widow’ of a 7/7 London bomber was a key link between Al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan and their fighters in East Africa, it has emerged.

Muslim convert Samantha Lewthwaite, who was married to Kings Cross bomber Germaine Lindsay, spent two years working for the deadly extremist organisation in South Africa using a false name.

Investigators in Britain and Kenya have now established that the Home Counties mother-of-four has been working with a key British-born bomb maker who had trained with Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

Lewthwaite’s role was to channel money raised in the UK and elsewhere to terror cells in Somalia.

A security source said: ‘We are now clearer about the role Lewthwaite has been playing for Al Qaeda and her links with this bomb maker.

‘She seems to have spent two years building up a network that spans the UK, South Africa, Pakistan and Somalia.’

Caught: British-born Jermaine Grant, 30, in cuffs and flanked by guards as he is held on terror charges in Mombasa, Kenya

Lewthwaite, 29, a soldier’s daughter from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, has been on the run in East Africa after police foiled a Christmas bomb plot against Western tourist targets in the Indian Ocean coastal resort of Mombasa in 2011.

Police now believe she has been working with experienced Al Qaeda bomb maker Habib Ghani. 

Sources said Ghani, from Hounslow, West London, gained bomb-making experience in Pakistan. He is understood to have a Pakistani father and a Kenyan mother and left Britain several years ago.

Lewthwaite fled with her young children and was initially thought to have crossed the border into lawless Somalia where she was being sheltered by Al Qaeda affiliate Al Shabaab. However, there have been recent reports she may have returned to Mombasa.

A Kenyan police source said: ‘We believe she is back in Mombasa but because she wears a full Muslim veil, she is difficult to spot. We have identified her as a blue-eyed woman in a hijab and believe she is active on Twitter and still working as a fundraiser for Al Shabaab.’

In December 2011, she was arrested and let go in mysterious circumstances after Kenyan police picked up her British accomplice Jermaine Grant close to a make-shift bomb factory.

Grant, 30, from Brixton, south London, and Lewthwaite were both charged with possessing bomb-making materials and of planning to cause loss of ‘innocent civilian lives’.

He will briefly appear in court on Mombasa on Wednesday. Last month, Scotland Yard anti-terror officers were due to fly to Kenya to give evidence in Grant’s trial. 

But police received a tip-off that Lewthwaite and other Al Shabaab terrorists were planning to attack the court and free him, so his trial will now take place in a high-security court inside a prison.

Hiding: The Serena Beach Resort in Mombasa where Samantha Lewthwaite is believed to have previously rented an apartment

Lewthwaite, who also uses the Muslim name Sherafiyah, converted to Islam at the age of 17 and married Lindsay in 2002 after meeting him on the internet.

She was seven months’ pregnant when Lindsay, a Jamaican convert from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, killed 26 people when he blew himself up on a Piccadilly Line train in July 2005. 

British security services have so far failed to explain how she slipped off the radar, travelled to East Africa on a stolen passport, and became, as police believe, an integral member of Al Shabaab. Since her disappearance, Lewthwaite has been linked to a spate of grenade attacks in Mombasa, including one on a packed pub last year which killed three people, including a nine-year-old boy.

There are also reports she is using Twitter to bolster support for an all-female suicide squad in East Africa.

Bombers: Germaine Lindsay, Samantha's ex-husband, pictured centre before he blew himself up on a Piccadilly Line train in July 2005

She is known as ‘dada mzungu’ – Swahili for white sister – and is described as serving ‘Allah as his female soldier’ and who ‘commands her all-female mujahid terror squad and conducts operations against the kuffar [non-Muslims]’.

Grant is also facing charges for trying to sneak into Somalia disguised as a Muslim woman in 2008.

What CNN said about British-born Samantha Lewthwaite

 

(CNN) -- British-born Samantha Lewthwaite was once seen as a kind of victim of the July 2005 London terror attacks -- the pregnant wife of one of the suicide bombers who killed 52 people, now left alone to care for her children.

She condemned the attacks but then vanished. Now, Kenyan authorities say, she is the infamous "White Widow," alleged to be a supporter and financier of people linked to the Somali terror group Al-Shabaab.

Reports that a white woman was among the terrorists who stormed Nairobi, Kenya's, upscale Westgate Shopping Mall on Saturday -- an operation for which Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility -- have prompted a slew of media speculation that she might have been involved.

But no official confirmation has been given. A senior Kenyan government official said a woman was among the attackers. Yet it is "impossible," based on the government's photo evidence (and before a forensics examination is complete), to determine who that might be.

Lewthwaite, born in Buckinghamshire, England, earned her nickname as the widow of Germaine Lindsay, one of the four suicide bombers who attacked London's transportation system on July 7, 2005.

Now age 29, Lewthwaite met Lindsay, a British Muslim, when she was 17, according to the Daily Mail. A convert to Islam, she married him in 2002.

After the London attacks, she denied having knowledge of the plans. Later, Kenyan authorities said, she emerged in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa and became part of a terror cell linked to Al-Shabaab.

In December 2011, Kenyan authorities raided three homes in Mombasa, including one allegedly used by Lewthwaite, and arrested some people on suspicion of planning to destroy a bridge, a ferry and hotels frequented by Western tourists.

At Lewthwaite's residence, investigators found the kind of bomb-making materials that were used in the London attacks, Kenyan counterterror police said. But Lewthwaite was not found.

A security guard who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity in 2012 said he saw a white woman leave the residence hours before the raid. Authorities have yet to catch up to her.

Kenyan authorities also suspect Lewthwaite of hatching a plot to break fellow Briton Jermaine Grant out of jail after he was arrested in connection with the alleged Mombasa plot.

'An innocent young person'

But in the English town of Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire, where Lewthwaite lived with Lindsay for a time, she is remembered by local councilor Raj Khan as a good, helpful woman.

"She was an innocent young person," said Khan, who said he knew Lewthwaite as a "family friend" before the July 2005 bombings.

"She would do anything to accommodate other people. She was a very good human being. She did everything to help others."

He warned against judging her based on rumors and speculation.

"I'm worried that the picture that has been demonizing her may be premature because it has not been substantiated," he said. "Unless there is hard evidence, we should not just unnecessarily jump to conclusions."

Lewthwaite also reportedly spent time in Banbridge, in Northern Ireland, where her grandmother, Elizabeth Allen, still lives.