Samantha Lewthwaite, like other infamous figures, is better known by her unwanted sobriquet: the ‘White Widow’. It has a chilling ring to it, even after all these years.
Lewthwaite, for anyone who may have forgotten, is the Christian-born daughter of a former British soldier who became a Muslim convert and married one of the 7/7 suicide bombers.
Her ‘martyred’ husband, Germaine Lindsay, was responsible for 26 of the 52 deaths in the coordinated wave of attacks on London’s transport network in 2005, after detonating an explosive-filled rucksack on a Piccadilly Line Tube train at King’s Cross.
Who could have predicted in the immediate aftermath of the carnage that his seemingly innocent young wife from Buckinghamshire – then eight months pregnant with their second child – would end up having more blood on her hands than him in the ensuing two decades?
Hence the reason Samantha Lewthwaite, wanted for a string of terrorist atrocities in Africa after leaving the UK, is called the ‘White Widow.’
Today, after inevitably fading from public consciousness with the passage of time, she is back in the news.
Lewthwaite has been featured in TV programmes and newspaper articles to mark the 20th anniversary this week of the July 2005 bombings.
Her transformation – from Home Counties prom queen to fanatical jihadist – is, controversially, also being made into a feature film called Girl Next Door starring Bella Ramsey from the post-apocalyptic TV series The Last Of Us.
Samantha Lewthwaite is the Christian-born daughter of a former British soldier who became a Muslim convert and married one of the 7/7 suicide bombers
Her ‘martyred’ husband, Germaine Lindsay (right), was responsible for 26 of the 52 deaths in the coordinated wave of attacks on London’s transport network in 2005, after detonating an explosive-filled rucksack on a Piccadilly Line Tube train at King’s Cross
A view of the Number 30 double-decker bus is seen in Tavistock Square after a bomb was detonated on the top deck
A bomb damaged Circle Line subway train is seen stopped between Liverpool Street and Aldgate staions in London, Thursday, July 7, 2008
Behind her notorious image is a woman, it has since emerged, who loves Beyonce and compiled shopping lists (complete with everyday British items such as Weetabix on it) while on the run.
Lewthwaite is now 41 and a mother of four. Her eldest children, a boy and a girl by Lindsay, would be around 21 and 19; and her youngest children, also a boy and a girl by her late second husband, an Islamist terrorist she married in Africa, around 16 and 15.
Her life since disappearing from Britain in the wake of the 7/7 bombings leaves many unanswered questions, with the result that Lewthwaite has reached almost mythical status. Where is she? How has she managed to evade capture for so long? Could she even be dead?
The starting point to unpick the mythology is Kenya, where she still faces terrorism charges relating to four separate attacks in the country between 2012 and 2019 which killed 244 innocent people.
Willis Oketch, an investigative reporter on the highly respected Standard, the oldest newspaper in the country, has been working alongside us to try to find answers.
A senior security source he contacted on our behalf told him the ‘White Widow’ is very much alive and was seen in neighbouring Uganda as recently as last year.
She is actually based in Somalia, he said, which also borders Kenya, where she is believed to be part of an al-Shabaab cell, the al-Qaeda affiliate with a stronghold in the failed state.
‘Despite not knowing her exact location, we believe she is active in terrorism activities under al-Shabaab control in Somalia,’ the security source told Oketch.
Lewthwaite faces terrorism charges in Kenya relating to four separate attacks in the country between 2012 and 2019 which killed 244 innocent people
Shehzad Tanweeer, Jermaine Lindsay and Mohammad Sidique Khan with their rucksacks at Luton railway station
Possible picture of Samantha Lewthwaite (on right) with unidentified man from 2013
Lewthwaite, he said, was the ‘main financier’ of the cell – a logistical role, in other words, controlling the money, not a frontline operative fighting alongside men with AK-47s and grenade-launchers.
It has not been possible to verify this intelligence but it chimes with the few details we have learned about Lewthwaite down the years.
Somalia is a logical place for her to hide out. With some areas of the country in anarchy, Lewthwaite, the subject of an international arrest warrant – with a high-priority ‘red notice’ – is beyond the reach of the Kenyan authorities and Western governments.
Lewthwaite has certainly led a charmed life as one the world’s most wanted women.
Initially, she portrayed herself as another victim in the wake of the 7/7 bombings and said she had absolutely no knowledge of her husband’s murderous plans.
Yes, she was a Muslim convert – she met Lindsay, a 19-year-old, Jamaican-born carpet-fitter and convert himself – in an Islamic chatroom when she was 18, but in an interview with The Sun newspaper, for which she was paid £30,000, she called his actions ‘abhorrent’.
Police placed her in a safe house after their marital home in Aylesbury, the county town of Buckinghamshire, was torched in an arson attack. Yet the clues about where her real sympathies lay were there all along.
Lewthwaite gave birth to her daughter shortly after the bombings. She was given the middle name Shahidah (‘martyr’ in Arabic). The child’s older brother also had the male form, Shaheed, as a middle name.
The 7/7 bombers, Hasib Hussain, Shehzad Tanweer, Jermaine Lindsay and Mohammad Sidique Khan
CCTV cameras show how the London suicide attackers of 7/7 carried out a dry run days before the blasts killed 52
The rear of the bus that was destroyed by an explosion at Tavistock Square during a series of explosions which ripped through London’s underground tube and bus network
Emergency services fill King’s Cross station after the attack
A victim of the explosion is stretchered to a waiting ambulance
A bus in Tavistock Square was destroyed by one of the bombers
‘Samantha played dumb – I am just the wife,’ former Metropolitan Police anti-terrorism officer David Videcette recalled when interviewed for the Netflix series, World’s Most Wanted.
‘I really pressed hard to have her arrested. I really wanted her on the suspect list. Sadly, the senior investigating officer felt there was not enough evidence to prosecute and the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] were going to say “no”. I massively regret that she got this opportunity to kill other people.’
Lewthwaite left the country a free women with her children in 2008, and landed in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Shortly afterwards she married for the second time. Husband number two, Fahmi Salim, the father of her two youngest offspring, was a Kenyan with family links to al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab.
Five years after their wedding, David Videcette’s worst fears materialised when masked gunmen ran amok at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, murdering 71 people.
Lewthwaite is accused of planning, funding or taking part in the outrage, along with a grenade attack on a bar in the coastal resort of Mombasa the previous year in 2012 (three dead); the 2015 massacre at Garissa University (148 dead); and, in 2019, she was also linked with a terrorist attack on a hotel in Nairobi (21 dead). More than 240 deaths in all have been linked to her, in other words.
Al-Shabaab says Kenyan targets are legitimate because they voted for the government which has declared war on the group.
It’s hard to comprehend, even now, how a girl from the Home Counties, whose father served in Northern Ireland during the 1970s at the height of the Troubles (and whose paternal grandfather was also in the Armed Forces) could be implicated in so much bloodshed.
Initially, Samantha Lewthwaite (pictured) portrayed herself as another victim in the wake of the 7/7 bombings and said she had absolutely no knowledge of her husband’s murderous plans
Police fleetingly caught up with Lewthwaite when they got wind of imminent attacks which led them to a property in Mombasa in 2011. Hidden under a sofa, they found a haul of fuses and 60 rounds of ammunition with magazines of bullets for AK-47 assault rifles.
They arrested a British man called Jermaine Grant at the scene who was later jailed but who named Lewthwaite as the senior member of the cell.
‘There is someone much bigger you want,’ he told them when he was seized.
Police discovered she was in the adjacent apartment – the flats shared the same balcony – but the passport they found was in the name of Natalie Faye Webb, a 26-year-old nurse from Southend-on-Sea, so they left.
By the time they realised their ‘mistake’ – that the passport was a fake and Miss Webb had been the victim of identity theft – Samantha Lewthwaite had fled.
It was the last confirmed sighting of her. Once again, the ‘White Widow’, as she would soon become known, managed to escape justice.
This is the official version of events which was reported in the media at the time, but her getaway was more controversial, it seems, at least by Western standards.
Reporter Willis Oketch was given a different account of what is alleged to have happened. He says the officers in question found Lewthwaite, aka Natalie Webb, playing with her children when they first entered her accommodation around midnight.
Cops arrested a British man called Jermaine Grant (pictured) after they got wind of imminent attacks who was later jailed but who named Lewthwaite as the senior member of the cell
The bomb factory in Mombasa used by Samantha Lewthwaite and Jermain Grant where chemicals were found to be used for making bombs to target western tourists
They said they thought she was ‘innocent’ of any involvement with Grant and another accomplice who was also taken into custody.
Or so they reported, when they got back to the station. But they were strongly suspected of accepting five million Kenyan dollars (nearly £30,000) from Lewthwaite on the night, which she produced from her handbag, security sources have now told Oketch – an allegation, which, it should be stressed, remains unproven. ‘She left the flat immediately afterwards,’ he said. ‘Officers returned the following day after anti-terrorist officers in the UK told them who she was.
‘Several posh houses in the Nyali and Shanzu districts of the city were searched but she was nowhere to be found.’
Police discovered Lewthwaite subsequently got out of Kenya with the help of a police informer – a woman – who was the widow of a Kenyan terrorist killed in Somalia.
It is unclear whether she slipped back into the country again for the attack at the Westgate mall in Nairobi in 2013 or simply helped organise and fund the terror campaign from outside.
Either way, what Samantha Lewthwaite left behind in her Mombasa apartment in her hurry to escape has not been widely reported and provides a tantalising glimpse into her psyche.
Among her discarded possessions was her laptop which revealed a browsing history of any ordinary young women including websites for hair, make-up, fashion, weight loss – and beyoncefan.net.
There was a handwritten journal in which she tells herself to ‘look fabulous’ for social occasions, along with a typical weekly shopping list: ‘32 eggs, 12 cheese, Weetabix, orange juice and tuna …’
Lewthwaite is now 41 and a mother of four. Her eldest children, a boy and a girl by Lindsay, would be around 21 and 19; and her youngest children, also a boy and a girl by her late second husband, an Islamist terrorist she married in Africa, around 16 and 15
Yet the same journal contains a 32-line ode to Osama bin Laden, and she also gives thanks for having a husband – it’s not clear whether she is referring to Lindsay or Salim, who is also thought to be dead now – ‘that would go forth, give all he could for Allah and live a life of terrorising the disbelievers’.
What of her children? They would be following in their parents bloody footsteps, judging by this paragraph in her scribblings.
‘Recently, my beloved husband [Salim] gave a talk to my eight-year-old son and five-year-old daughter,’ she wrote. ‘He asked them what do you want to be when you are older? Both had many answers but both agreed to one of wanting to be a mujahid [a person engaged in jihad].’
The trail has now gone cold, aside from the fact that she is thought to be somewhere in Somalia.
Omar Mahmood is a senior analyst and Somalia security expert with the International Crisis Group (ICG) think-tank. ‘I think there is definitely a degree of legend in the Samantha Lewthwaite story,’ he told the Mail this week.
Two things he said, however, complement what journalist Willis Oketch was told by security sources in Kenya.
Firstly, he does not think reports that she may have been killed in a drone strike are credible. ‘A death, particularly that of a woman like Samantha Lewthwaite, is hard to keep quiet in Somalia – al-Shabaab makes propaganda out of such strikes.’
Secondly, the role of women in al-Shabaab, says Mahmood, is consistent with the position she is believed to occupy in the terror group.
Among Leithwaite’s discarded possessions was her laptop which revealed a browsing history of any ordinary young women including websites for hair, make-up, fashion, weight loss – and beyoncefan.net
‘Women often help organise finances and accounts, as well as carrying communications back and forth as they attract less suspicion crossing government and al-Shabaab lines in Somalia [they are in conflict with each other]’, he said.
Members of Lewthwaite’s family still live in Aylesbury.
At her uncle’s house, a woman who answered the door said she understood the interest of the Press, as it was the anniversary of the bombings, but politely declined to comment.
There is a photograph of Samantha Lewthwaite, before she converted, attending an end-of-year ball at her school that is still circulating. She is wearing a pink silk gown set off by a diamond tiara and matching gold earrings and necklace.
‘She was a perfectly normal teenager with normal friends,’ said Niknam Hussain, who has been a councillor in Aylesbury since 1999 and knew her well.
‘I can’t believe I am still talking about her as one of the world’s most wanted women 20 years on.’
