The British Muslim convert known as the ‘White Widow’ has joined ISIS and is training a female suicide bomber squad in Syria, it has been reported.
Samantha Lewthwaite, 30, from Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire has spent the past two and a half years on the run and has been repeatedly linked to terrorist plots in East Africa.
The mother-of-four – who is the widow of one of the 7/7 suicide bombers – is charged with plotting a bombing campaign across Kenya in 2011.
She is so highly regarded she is known as the ‘Special One’, reports the Daily Star Sunday.
A source told the paper: ‘There has been mention of a woman joining IS after being married to a jihadi fighter who became a martyr and there have been references to attacks in Africa.
‘IS have plenty of fighters but they lack someone who really understands how to exploit the western media and this is where her strength is.
‘She is a female version of Joseph Goebbels (the Nazi minister of propaganda under Adolf Hitler).’
Lewthwaite, who converted to Islam at the age of 17, was identified as a main recruiter for Al Qaeda in East Africa and is an official spokesman for terror group Al Shabaab.
The group admitted to a string of attacks in Kenya including last September’s assault on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall last year that claimed at least 67 lives.
She is wanted in Kenya on charges of being in possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit a felony dating back to December 2011.
After giving Kenyan police the slip in Mombasa in 2011, she has been on the run ever since, reportedly using a false South African passport and alias.
Lewthwaite is the widow of Jermaine Lindsay, one of four Islamist suicide bombers who blew himself up along with 26 passengers on a Tube train near King’s Cross Station in London in 2005.
Following the tragedy, she portrayed herself as another victim of the tragedy and called it ‘abhorrent’.
Kenyan Police have previously revealed Lewthwaite also financed Woolwich murderer Michael Adebolajo’s trip to East Africa for terror training.
She has even written poetry praising Osama bin Laden, according to computer files seized by police from her previous home in Mombasa.
-dailymail.co.uk
