Converting to Islam at age 17, and covering herself head-to-toe in a Burka, Lewthwaite described how “I gave my life to Allah and now I serve Allah as his female soldier”. She enrolled in the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and met Jamaican-born Jermaine Lindsay, a fellow Moslem convert through an Islamic Chat Room. They married in 2002 and had two children. In 2007, she disappeared with her children and re-surfaced in 2012 during a grenade attack on a pub in Kenya where witnesses saw Lewthwaite throw grenades into the bar killing three people, including a nine-year-old boy, and maiming 30.
In spite of her distinctive lace-edged hajib, Lewthwaite has dodged capture more than four times.
That the ashes of terrorists; the bodies of children found in refrigerators with knives still in their backs; victims with their eyes gouged out and castrated victims whose fingers had been removed by pliers, but no Samantha Lewthwaite at the Westgate Mall makes it Escape Number Five.
How British, American and South African authorities haven’t caught up with ‘Mama Muj’ has got to be one of the biggest terrorist-on-the-loose mysteries of all time.
The flamboyance of the media-dubbed “White Widow” goes beyond how she dresses.
As of last April and maybe before, Lewthwaite owned an online persona gaining a cult following among other radicalised young women (
Daily Mail). ‘The kuffar hunt her, but still can’t find her, for Allah protect his warriors,’ one woman posted on an extremist Islamic website.
‘More than four times our white sister has defeated the kuffar. Now every Muslim sister wants to be like our dada mzungu! I will join you white sister. May Allah keep you firm.’
Lewthwaite posted a poem on Twitter called “Maybe Paradise Tomorrow”: “Maybe tomorrow it will be Jannah (Islamic paradise), I look around at how beautiful Jihad is, It’s alive in Kenya, It’s alive in me, And I’m breathing Jihad, It’s my time.”
Terrorists used twitter to brag about their slaughter and control of the Westgate Mall.
Perhaps they learned the advantages of the instant communication of Twitter from Interpol’s Most Wanted, who, free as a wacko bird, took to the social media last April to put down a rival terrorist and killer as an ‘Obnoxious little prat’.
“Her latest foray into social networking, via bitchy tweets, was directed at a man called Omar Shafik Hammami, a former student from Alabama, who was last year placed on the FBI’s most wanted list for plotting terrorist attacks. (Daily Mail, April 27, 2013)
“With a $5 million bounty offered by America for information leading to his arrest, Hammami also works as a propagandist for Al-Shabaab, the Somali wing of Al-Qaeda, of which Lewthwaite is a commander, helping recruit English-speaking youths.
“Known as The American, Hammami came to prominence after releasing a glamorous video of himself on the internet last year--a move that prompted fury among jealous rival terror factions.
“Certainly, Lewthwaite is among those whose nose has been put out of joint by this charismatic figure.
“After she intervened in a Twitter discussion among terrorists, Hammami dismissed her contribution as worthless because she was ‘merely a girl from Kenya’.
“A furious Lewthwaite--on the run from Kenyan police as well as British intelligence after being linked to plots to blow up Western tourist hotels--then hit back in an exchange reproduced on an Islamic website.
“Yes, am a girl in Kenya like dat makes a difference u misogynist!’ she tweeted, before adding in the text-speak of a teenager: ‘Fyi sam lewthwaite thinks u r a irritating obnoxious contemptible little Muj PRAT.’
The horrific Westgate terrorist attack of which she is suspected of masterminding, isn’t Lewthwaite’s first.
Last year, witnesses told police how they saw a white woman, identified as Lewthwaite, fire grenades into a crowded bar near Nairobi--killing three people, including a nine-year-old boy, and horrifically injuring 30 as people were watching England play Italy in Euro 2012.
During a series of earlier raids on safe houses Lewthwaite had been using, police found ammunition, bomb-making equipment and detailed plans for terror attacks on other targets.
Lewthwaite, dubbed ‘the white widow’ by detectives, had fled--but left behind a laptop with pictures of herself and terror plans.
With the kind of ego for which she is known, how Lewthwaite must love that name, a name that romanticizes a cold-hearted Islamic terrorist, too long at large.
Not long after Lewthwaite was being openly idolized by a cult following on the Internet, and tweeting nasty grams to ‘The American’, Americans learned that the funded-by-billions NSA was spying on them.
Now that she’s on Interpol’s most wanted list, you can depend that Lewthwaite has morphed into a new disguise.
But maybe someone with could-be important information may remember her from recent days when she was traipsing about in what may have been a lace-fringed, homemade hajib.
How difficult can it be to find a flamboyant terrorist who travels from country to country with three children in tow, one who passes as freely through borders as she does over the Internet?
Judi McLeod——
Bio and Archives
-- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
It’s her characteristic flamboyance that may bring down Westgate Mall mastermind suspect Samantha Lewthwaite; a kind of trademark flamboyance that sees her wearing hijabs decorated with black lace and sporting bright lipstick.
The terrorist at large, who may have been wearing part of the “sexy lingerie” Kenyan police found in one of her Kenyan safe houses on her hijab, is now Interpol’s Most Wanted Woman in the World.
