White widow: where is the most wanted woman terrorist?
Aylesbury: She is called the most wanted woman in the world, a suspected terrorist charged with plotting to blow up resort hotels in Kenya packed with Christmas tourists, a Westerner who wrote an ode praising
It is clear that Lewthwaite treasured him, in part, for his embrace of Islamic extremism, or so she wrote in handwritten pages uncovered by Kenyan police after the raid in which they let her slip through their grasp.
The writings constitute the rough outline of a book Lewthwaite planned to write — “a message of hope, encouragement and light” — about the life of a jihadi.
“Allah has blessed me with being married to a mujtahid and meeting many wonderful inspiring people along the way,” Lewthwaite wrote, praising her new husband for “terrorizing the disbelievers.”
She described him as talking with her 8-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter — the children of her first marriage — about their goals in life and being heartened to learn that both children wanted to take up their parents' cause.
Her new husband taught the children that to be jihadis, they had to actually live their lives with that commitment guiding all their actions, Lewthwaite wrote.
On Sept. 21, Al Shabab terrorists attacked the upscale Westgate Mall in Nairobi with grenades and assault weapons, killing at least 67 people. Early eyewitness reports that a white woman took part in the raid led to fevered speculation that Lewthwaite was involved.
“White widow exclusive: Mother of all terrorists!” read a front-page headline in London's Daily Mirror tabloid.
Some British tabloids persistently referred to her as the mastermind of the slaughter — without a scintilla of evidence that she was even in Kenya.
At roughly the same time, her second husband was reported to have been killed in a shootout in Somalia between rival Al Shabab factions, making her a widow once again.
Lewthwaite became the subject of an international search on Sept. 26 when Interpol called for her arrest among its 190 member nations. But the “red notice” linked her to the failed 2011 Christmas plot, not to the Westgate Mall killings.
It says she is wanted for “being in possession of explosives” and “conspiracy to commit a felony,” though the timing of the Interpol notice — issued just five days after the mall attack — led many to assume that police believe she had a role in that as well.
Since then, the British press has tied her to other events, including the case of an Al Shabab prisoner in Britain who in November escaped by donning a woman's burqa.
In Mombasa, Kenya, where the trial of her alleged accomplice in one of the plots is ongoing, Islamic community leader Abubakar Shariff Ahmed said he thinks Lewthwaite's story has taken on a mythology all its own.
“An English lady, with four kids, not by herself, and she can disappear?” he asked. “Scotland Yard is looking for her, the FBI, the ATPU (Kenya's counterterror police) and she's still in Kenya? Come on.”