PROFILE: WHO IS SAMANTHA LEWTHWAITE, DUBBED THE “WHITE WIDOW ” She was a “shy girl ” from Buckinghamshire but the name Samantha Lewthwaite is once again being linked to a global atrocity . The media have linked her to the Kenyan shopping centre attack. However, officials continue to advise caution and there has been no confirmation of Ms Lewthwaite’ s involvement, either as an attacker , organiser or fundraiser. Ms Lewthwaite was first thrust into the spotlight after the 7 July bombings in London in 2005 as the widow of bomber Germaine Lindsay, who killed 26 people when he blew up a Piccadilly Line Tube train near King’s Cross . A Muslim convert dubbed the “White Widow” by much of the media, she has no terrorism record in the UK but is currently on the run from Kenyan Police over alleged links to a terrorist cell that planned to bomb the country’s coast . After the 7 July attacks , Ms Lewthwaite condemned her husband ’s actions as “abhorrent ”, saying trips to radical mosques had “poisoned his mind ” “How these people could have turned him and poisoned his mind is dreadful ,” she told the Sun. “ He was an innocent , naive and simple man. I suppose he must have been an ideal candidate. ” But not long after the attack she disappeared . She was known to be in Kenya and, last year, officials said she had fled to Somalia and the police were hunting a woman who used several identities, including hers . BBC journalist Peter Taylor , who has just returned from Kenya where he was making a Panorama programme on al-Shabab, said there was still a lot of speculation about the group involved in the attack on the shopping centre . However, he said: “If , as the foreign minister says, there was a British woman involved ‘who had done this many times before’, there is a strong possibility it may well be Samantha Lewthwaite. “If she is dead then she would have achieved the kind of martyrdom that her husband Germaine Lindsay achieved .” He said Ms Lewthwaite had become an almost “mythological figure” and the search for her had been going on a “long time” . “At the time of the 7/ 7 bombings, the impression was that she disapproved and was highly critical of her husband ’ s action,” he added . “Then she disappeared off the radar and turns up again in Kenya . It would appear she became involved with al-Shabab to fight jihad as her husband believed he was doing when he bombed the Tube .”‘ Follower not leader’ Ms Lewthwaite spent much of her life in the Buckinghamshire town of Aylesbury. The daughter of a British soldier , she grew up in a modest terraced house in a quiet street . Raj Khan , a local councillor who has known her for decades, told the BBC she was a shy girl . “I knew her when she was a child ,” he said. “She was very innocent, lacking confidence and very easy to get on with. She was a follower not a leader. ” She became friendly with a local Muslim family who helped her to convert to Islam when she was 15 . At the Grange School in Aylesbury, the new Muslim convert stood out , according to Novid Shaid who taught there . Speaking to BBC Radio 4′ s The Report last year , he said: “ She seemed to be really proud wearing the hijab , there was a bubbly feeling around her . ” After a few years , “we noticed her wearing the full galabiya (full - length robe) which some converts tend to do when they become more serious ,” he said. Ms Lewthwaite’s interest in religion developed further when she enrolled in a degree course in politics and the study of religions in 2002 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. She met Jamaican-born Muslim convert Lindsay via the internet the same year and the couple married a few months later. They lived initially in Huddersfield but moved to Aylesbury in September 2003 . Six months later , their first child was born. Their second child was born after the bombings. Her father, sister and brother also distanced themselves from Lindsay. “He was a good and loving husband and a brilliant father , who showed absolutely no sign of doing this atrocious crime,” they said in a statement. “We as a family had no idea of his plans and are as horrified as the rest of the world.”
Posted on: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 05:15:51 +0000
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