‘White Widow’ hunt
Interpol issues arrest notice for her after Kenya terrorist attack
Interpol issues arrest notice for suspect in Kenya mall attack
LONDON: The British woman dubbed the “White Widow” was at the centre of a worldwide hunt after Interpol issued an international notice for her arrest in the wake of the Kenya shopping mall attack.
Samantha Lewthwaite, a 29-yearold Muslim convert, was married to Germaine Lindsay, one of four Islamist suicide bombers who attacked the London transport network on July 7, 2005, killing 52 people.
The Interpol red notice issued on Thursday at Kenya’s request said the mother-of-three was “wanted by Kenya on charges of being in possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit a felony dating back to December 2011”.
The notice did not specifically mention the deadly four-day mall siege in Nairobi by Somalia’s alQaeda-linked al-Shebab movement,
However, it follows widespread mediaspeculationoverLewthwaite’s possible role in the attack which left 67 victims dead, a toll expected to rise as more bodies are discovered.
Kenya’s foreign minister said a British woman was among the Westgate Mall attackers although President Uhuru Kenyatta later said the reports could not be confirmed.
Interpol issued four colour photographs of Lewthwaite along with the arrest notice yesterday.
One shows her with long dark hair and pouting at the camera, while the other three show her wearing the Islamic headscarf in various poses.
Interpol’s notice, which requires member states to detain the suspect pending extradition, said Kenyan authorities wanted other member nations to be “aware of this danger posed by this woman, not just across the region but also worldwide”.
It said Lewthwaite had previously only been wanted “at the national level for alleged possession of a fraudulently obtained South African passport”.
Britain’s Metropolitan Police and Foreign Office refused to comment, saying it was a matter for Interpol and the Kenyan authorities.
The global hunt was launched as Kenya on Thursday began burying the victims of the mall massacre by Islamist gunmen, as police pleaded for patience while searchers combed the charred rubble of the devastated complex for dozens still missing.
The daughter of a British soldier, Samantha Louise Lewthwaite professed herself appalled when her Jamaican-born husband detonated a rucksack full of explosives and blew himselfuponaLondonUnderground train at Russell Square station in 2005, killing 26 people.
She was pregnant with their second child at the time.
“I totally condemn and am horrified by the atrocities which occurred in London,” she said.
Lewthwaite had met Lindsay in an Internet chat forum when she was 17, having converted to Islam two years earlier.
South Africa said on Thursday that Lewthwaite had gained a South African passport using the assumed identity Natalie Faye Webb and that the document was cancelled in 2011.
She had first entered the country in 2008. She was accompanied by her three children, a girl and two boys, who would now be roughly aged between seven and 12.
on for an animation the White Widow’s journey
Media reports this week cited credit records as showing that “Natalie Faye Webb” had at least three addresses in Johannesburg and ran up debts of US$8,600 (RM27,773).
Two neighbours in the leafy Johannesburg suburb of Bromhof said they recognised Lewthwaite’s picture.
Earlier this month Kenyan authorities accused her of working with another suspected British Islamist, Jermaine Grant, who is on trial in Kenya accused of links to Al-Shebab and of plotting attacks.
It is believed Lewthwaite was involved in the alleged plan to bomb a number of tourist resorts on Kenya’s coast and has been on the run for months, with reported sightings of her in Somalia. — AFP