Samantha Lewthwaite, of Aylesbury, has been on run for nearly four years
- London University graduate 'coordinating car bombs and suicide attacks'
- Somali security source calls her 'an evil person but a very clever operator'
- She is 'offering families £300 to use children/women as suicide bombers'
White Widow: British jihadi Samantha Lewthwaite is thought to have orchestrated a number of attacks
White Widow Samantha Lewthwaite has masterminded the murder of 400 people after becoming a key member of terror group Al Shabaab, it was claimed last night.
The British jihadi is thought to have orchestrated a number of attacks including last month’s slaughter of 148 people at a university in northern Kenya.
Lewthwaite, the widow of London 7/7 bomber Jermaine Lindsay, is believed to have risen rapidly through the ranks and is now very close to its leader Ahmad Umar.
The London University graduate is now coordinating car bombs and suicide attacks in Somalia and Kenya as well as trying to recruit children as jihadis, according to an officer in the Somali security forces.
The anti-terror officer told the Daily Mirror last night that mother of four Lewthwaite is ‘an evil person but a very clever operator’ who has been quickly promoted after many of al Shabaab’s leaders have been killed in drone strikes.
The official also said the 31-year-old Briton was offering poverty-stricken families £300 to use their children and women as suicide bombers.
He added: ‘We share all our information with British agents here in Mogadishu. They are here to keep an eye on the lady and other Britons in Somalia.
‘The SAS are ready to get her or we are ready to call in a drone strike against her. We will get her eventually’.
The Foreign Office was unable to comment on the revelations last night.
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Hideaway: The British jihadi is thought to have orchestrated a number of attacks including last month’s slaughter of 148 people at a university in northern Kenya from her base in Somalia
Deadly attack: A woman is rescued from a building where she had been held hostage, following last month’s slaughter of 148 people at a university in northern Kenya
Response: Soldiers from the Kenya Defence Forces guard the main gate of the Garissa University College compound that was the scene of the attack by Al Shabaab gunmen last month
Lewthwaite left her home in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, in the wake of the 7/7 attacks in 2005 and has been on the run for nearly four years after plotting to kill tourists in Mombasa.
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She disappeared from British police radar and was next seen in December 2011 in the small town of Bakarani on Kenya's east coast where police had swooped on a slum area to arrest suspected terrorists.
As police sent her DNA and fingerprints to Scotland Yard overnight, Lewthwaite fled.
It emerged last year that that Lewthwaite had met and married Fahmi Jamal Salim who has been on the run from Kenyan police since he shot and killed two police officers in Nairobi in 2011.
She met Salim through the cleric al- Faisal, in Johannesburg in 2008. They had false South African identities and both worked in the city while planning their jihadist activities.
Salim ran a medical supplies business while Lewthwaite was an accountant for a Halal pie-making factory.
She gave birth to two children in a Johannesburg clinic, completing their family of four, including Lindsay's son and daughter.
They are now believed to be living in the Lower Shebelle area of southern Somalia, an al-Shabaab stronghold , travelling by dhow – an Arab fishing boat – to reach their counterpart jihadists in Mombasa – or crossing the porous Kenyan border by vehicle at Kiungi town.
First marriage: Lewthwaite is the widow of 7/7 bomber Germaine Lindsay, pictured, who killed 26 people in the London Tube train attacks in July 2005
New love: Lewthwaite and Fahmi Jamal Salim appear in a 'selfie' taken at their home in Somalia, where she is said to be masterminding more attacks
Lewthwaite home-schools her four children and has written in her diaries of her hope they will become jihadists. The secretive local al-Shabaab community takes care of the children while their parents are away on visits to networks in Kenya.
Lewthwaite is considered an important banker/logistician for al-Shabaab. Until recently she was a devoted follower of Ahmed Abdi Godane, the al-Shabaab founder and spiritual leader who announced alliance to al-Qaeda in June 2011.
There had been a $7m ( £4.2m) reward for information leading to his arrest. Lewthwaite and her husband were part of his six-member terror cell.
Godane was the mastermind behind the shocking armed raid on Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall in October 2013, describing his militia's 67 murders there as 'an epic battle written in blood by my fighters to change the course of history'.
Lewthwaite later openly tweeted her support and admiration for Godane.
He was killed in 2014 in an American air strike on a convoy in southern Somalia, and counter-terrorism police now fear that Lewthwaite and her cohort could be planning revenge strikes.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3085770/White-Widow-Samantha-Lewthwaite-masterminded-400-murders.html#ixzz3aVNXdJ8y
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