Is the soldier’s daughter who wed a July 7 bomber on the run after plot to blow up a Kenyan city?
THE British widow of one of the 7/7 bombers is at the centre of a suspected terror plot in Kenya.
Anti-terrorist officers in Nairobi are hunting a woman understood to be travelling with three children who escaped when police swooped on a cell they believe was planning an attack in the coastal city of Mombasa at Christmas.
Authorities say the woman suspect has used several identities, including that of Samantha Lewthwaite – the wife of suicide bomber Jermaine Lindsay, who killed 26 people when he blew up a tube train at King’s Cross in 2005.
Like the woman police are looking for, Miss Lewthwaite has three children – two with Lindsay and one born in 2009 to an unknown father.
To complicate matters, police say their suspect had used a passport with a photo bearing a striking resemblance to the 28year-old Muslim convert but with the name of a South African-born nurse, Natalie Faye Webb, 26, from Essex.
Miss Webb’s family in Southend- on-sea said Special Branch alerted them to the identity theft but told them not to discuss it for ‘operational reasons’.
Yesterday Miss Lewthwaite’s family, in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, said they have
‘No one in the family is in contact with her’
not seen her ‘for years’ but believed she was in South Africa. Her father Andrew, 56, a builder and former soldier, said he not had any contact with his daughter for a long time, but insisted: ‘It is not something we believe she would be involved in.’
Her uncle Nigel Lewthwaite, 51, said he understood she had married again, to another Muslim man. He said: ‘Her father only found out that she’d had another child when she left this country. He just isn’t in contact with her. I don’t know anybody in her family who is.
‘Her father thought she was in South Africa, but we don’t know. We don’t even know when she left the country. Apparently she’s married another Muslim man and her father thought she was in South Africa.’
Miss Lewthwaite converted to Islam at the age of 15 and married unemployed carpet fitter Lindsay in 2002. Three years later, while she was seven months pregnant with their second child, Jamaican-born Lindsay detonated his rucksack bomb on a Piccadilly Line train, killing 26 of the 52 who died in the July 7 bombings. She later issued a statement saying the attacks were ‘abhorrent’.
Kenyan police say the woman they are hunting fled the gang’s hideout before they raided the house in December, where more than 60 rounds of AK47 ammunition and other weapons were discovered.
One of the woman’s associates, Jermaine Grant, 29, of Newham, East London, was arrested. He has been charged with possessing bomb-making equipment and conspiring to cause an explosion and is due to go on trial in May over what sources call a ‘serious’ terrorist plot.
Police are also searching for terror suspect Habib Ghani, 26, from Hounslow, West London, who is understood to have fled with the woman and her children.
The dramatic disclosure came after a briefing from officials in Nairobi, who believe the woman may still be in Kenya. Police spokesman Erick Kiraithe said: ‘We know quite a bit about her now. She had three identities in the past and that [Samantha Lewthwaite] is one possible identity. Our expectation is that our counter-terror team should be able to locate her soon.’
Police say they will not confirm the woman they are searching for is Miss Lewthwaite until she is captured because it is possible her identity could have been stolen.
The Metropolitan Police has sent a team to the Kenyan capital to assist in the hunt, which comes amid mounting concern over the number of British extremists going to Kenya and Somalia, which officials now regard as the ‘destination of choice’ for would-be terrorists.
There are fears some militants could return to carry out attacks in the UK after receiving training in Somalia from the Al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab rebel group.