Video: South Africa officials say no inquiries from Kenya about “White Widow”
VANCOUVER – Interpol has issued a worldwide alert for the woman known as the ‘White Widow.’
The international policing agency on Thursday sent out a ‘Red Notice’ for British national Samantha Lewthwaite, the widow of one of the London 7/7 suicide bombers, amid allegations she may have played a role in the deadly siege at Nairobi’s Westgate Mall.
Lewthwaite is rumoured to have connections to al-Shabab, the militant organization that claimed responsibility for the four-day siege, and has been a wanted woman in Kenya since 2011.
READ MORE: How did Samantha Lewthwaite become the ‘White Widow’?
The Interpol alert for the 29-year-old mother of three stems from a foiled plot to blow up tourist hotels and restaurants in Mombasa in 2011.
“By requesting an Interpol Red Notice, Kenya has activated a global ‘tripwire’ for this fugitive,” Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said in a statement.
“Through the Interpol Red Notice, Kenyan authorities have ensured that all 190 member countries are aware of the danger posed by this woman, not just across the region but also worldwide,” Noble said.
The speculation about her involvement in the Westgate Mall attack stems from reports a white woman with a British accent was seen at the scene on Saturday and was possibly giving orders.
There were also reports she may have been killed in the government assault to regain control of the shopping centre.
Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamad also fuelled speculation about Lewthwaite in an interview with PBS Newshour on Monday, when she suggested a British woman was involved in the attack.
READ MORE: ‘A lot of people died in front of me,’ teen describes Kenya attack
Kenyan authorities say Lewthwaite, the daughter of a British soldier and a Northern Irish mother, entered the country in February 2011 on a forged South African passport, under the name Natalie Faye Webb.
The real Natalie Faye Webb is a nurse who lives in Essex, U.K.
South Africa’s eNews Channel Africa (eNCA) reported Wednesday night Lewthwaite had lived in South Africa and “fleeced” banks and stores in the country since 2009.
According to eNCA, she owed more than 28,000 South African Rand (CAD$2,064, by Thursday’s exchange rate) to First Rand Bank, almost R30,000 (CAD$3,096 CAD) to Standard Bank and approximately R20,000 (CAD$2,064) to two retail stores.
A credit report posted on the eNCA website showed Nathalie Faye Webb maintained an address in Johannesburg for a four-year period beginning May 23, 2009, but was associated with three other addresses as a tenant or with unknown status.
“eNCA can reveal that she signed four rental leases in and around Johannesburg suburbs in 2009. Documents in our possession show a woman with the same South African alias was used to secure loans from local banks. They also prove that default judgments have been issued to Webb for bad debt,” eNCA reported.
South Africa’s Eyewitness News reported she lived in the area of Mayfair with her daughter and two sons and worked as “an IT specialist at a halaal pie factory.”
Eyewitness News also reported, “consumer records show that she was active in the country as recently as May last year.”
READ MORE: Militant group behind mall siege attacks Kenyan border towns
Among the allegations about Lewthwaite’s links to militant activities is that she has been a financier for terrorist plots.
Police questioned Lewthwaite in December 2011, after police stormed an apartment in Mombasa, ahead of the planned attacks on the resort area.
They arrested and charged four individuals including fellow Briton Jermaine Grant, who is currently on trial in connection with the plot. Lewthwaite was not detained at that time.
According to the Telegraph, Kenyan authorities believed she was an innocent tourist. When they came back to the unit to view her laptop, she had already fled, reportedly to Somalia.
Authorities later charged Lewthwaite in absentia on charges of possessing explosive materials and issued a warrant for her arrest.
Lewthwaite was married to 19-year-old London bomber Germaine Lindsay. She was just 21 years old and pregnant with Jamaican-born Lindsay’s second child when he detonated a device in the London Underground on July 7, 2005.
He killed 26 people in a coordinated attack that left a total of 52 people dead.
At the time she was “horrified by the atrocities.”
Her eldest son and daughter were fathered by Lindsay. A second son was reportedly born in 2009 to an unknown father, believed to be a Moroccan Muslim man.
Britain’s The Sunday Mirror reported she later married a Kenyan-British Islamist named Habib Gani, who is believed to have been killed on Sept. 12 in an attack that also claimed the life of U.S.-born al-Shabab member Omar Hammami.
Comments