White Widow ‘mentored terrorists’ in Majengo

By Nyambega Gisesa

@Nyambegangisesa

@standardmedia.co.ke

 

The world’s most hunted female fugitive lived in Nairobi for several months and was associated with young people from Pumwani’s Majengo slums.

Samantha Lewthwaite alias the White Widow is said to have moved to Nairobi in February 2011 and lived in a rented apartment less than100 metres from Junction Mall with her four children.

She paid Sh60,000 for the three-bedroom flat.

But police say they were not aware that the woman popularly known as the ‘White Widow’ rented an apartment in Nairobi.

“We are not aware Samantha was here or lived near Junction. All we know is that the woman is a wanted criminal in connection with an offence that was committed in Mombasa,” Inspector General David Kimaiyo said.

Samantha is a prime suspect in the organisation of the Westgate Mall attack in which over 70 people were killed and more than 200 injured. 

Although there is no evidence that directly connects her to being inside the mall, she is suspected to have been in the city during the attack.

Apart from the Kenyan security agencies, FBI agents, those from Germany, Israel and Britain too launched an investigation soon after gunmen invaded the mall in Nairobi on September 21.

One of the leads that they are following is her possible involvement in the attack.

Last month, Interpol named her in its Red Alert list, making the British soldier’s daughter from Aylesbury, Bucks in the UK a subject of an international manhunt by nearly 200 countries.

She is also a prime target for American Special Forces engaged in a number of ‘highly classified’ operations aimed at hunting down the world’s most wanted terrorists.

Documents leaked to The Nairobian discovered in a hard drive of a computer she left at her house in Mombasa paint her as a woman living a double life of a doting mother and an international terrorist.

According to documents availed to us from the file on Samantha, titled ‘Operation Unigof’, Samantha was arrested by Kenyan police in Mombasa’s Shanzu where she had been staying for a number of months.

According to the document listed as ‘Restricted’, Samantha was in contact with various people including Jermaine Grant, Mohamed Abdirahman Abdi Wahab listed as his landlord, Frank Nyenyo Ngala listed as bus driver, Ali Mohamed Ibrahim, Abdu Malik Modise, Hashim Salilale Osman, Saleh Hamisi Masudi, Ali Jammal Muhammed and Faid Abubakar Manswab.

The others are Fartum Ahmed Ali and Warda Breik Islam.

A manuscript written in Samantha’s handwriting, which was recovered from Shanzu, indicates that her role may be one of instruction and inspiration to men and women who would like to become Mujahideen.

A diary uncovered by The Nairobian reveals that the White Widow wants her children to become suicide bombers following in the footsteps of the barbaric example of her first husband, July 7 terrorist Germaine Lindsay.

Lindsay blew himself up on