London bomber widow Samantha Lewthwaite recruiting female terror squads in Somalia

By Alastair Jamieson, msnbc.com

Kenyan police are hunting a woman who used a passport in the name of Natalie Faye Webb with this photograph. They suspect that she may be Samantha Lewthwaite, who was married to Jermaine Lindsay, the suicide bomber who blew up a Tube train in London in 2005.

 

Samantha Lewthwaite, the British terror suspect on the run from police in Africa, is recruiting and training female attack squads in Somalia, according to a report.

The 28-year-old, believed to be the widow of one of the 2005 London bombers, is being protected by militant Islamist group al-Shabab, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph.

Lewthwaite fled Kenya in December after police in Mombasa linked her to a plot to attack tourist hotels there.

The newspaper said a blog entry on a website used by Kenyan Islamists said she was now in Somalia and linked to further terror activity in East Africa.

The entry said: “In +252 [Somalia] she [Lewthwaite] commands her 'all-female mujahid terror squad' and conducts her operations against the kuffar [non-Muslims].”

The newspaper said police sources in Kenya confirmed the blog was in line with their own intelligence.

"We cannot say that she is connected to any terrorist attacks in Kenya, but it is consistent with our information that she is with Shabab in Somalia," a senior anti-terror officer in Mombasa told the newspaper.

Lewthwaite, a convert to Islam originally from Buckinghamshire, England and whose father served in the British Army, has not had any contact with her British family for years.

The July 7 2005 London bombings, known in the UK as ‘7/7’, killed 52 London commuters on underground trains and buses. Lewthwaite is thought to be the widow of Jermaine Lindsey, one of the four suicide attackers involved – although it is not clear if she is another woman using Lewthwaite’s identity. She is thought to have used a passport with another alias, Natalie Faye Webb.

In June, Kenya police said a woman matching Lewthwaite's description had been seen in Mombasa shortly before a grenade attack on that killed three and left 25 injured.

Source: msnbc.com