Girl (12) saw ‘white lady’ among Nairobi terrorists
Somalilandsun – A schoolgirl who saw her nine-year-old brother shot dead by terrorists in Nairobi has told her teachers she saw a white woman among the attackers. Poorvi Jain (12) said the woman was accompanied by two boys aged just 15 or 16, one of whom was wearing a bandanna and carrying a guitar case, from which he produced a gun.
Her account is the latest piece of evidence which suggests that British terrorism suspect Samantha Lewthwaite may have been part of the al Shabaab gang that killed as many as 130 people during a four-day siege.
Lewthwaite (29), who was born in Banbridge, Co Down, is the widow of 7/7 bomber Germaine Lindsay. She has been on the run in east Africa for two years after allegedly plotting to attack Western targets in Kenya.
British-born Samantha Lewthwaite was once seen as a kind of victim of the July 2005 London terror attacks — the pregnant wife of one of the suicide bombers who killed 52 people, now left alone to care for her children. She condemned the attacks but then vanished. Now, Kenyan authorities said, she is the infamous “White Widow,” alleged to be a supporter and financier of people linked to the Somali terror group Al-Shabaab. Reports that a white woman was among the terrorists who stormed Nairobi, Kenya’s upscale Westgate shopping mall on Saturday — an operation for which Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility — have prompted a slew of media speculation that she might have been involved.
But no official confirmation has been given. A senior Kenyan government official said a woman was among the attackers. Yet it is “impossible” based on the government’s photo evidence (and before a forensics examination is complete) to determine who that might be.
Lewthwaite, born in Buckinghamshire, England, earned her nickname as the widow of Germaine Lindsay, one of the four suicide bombers who attacked London’s transportation system on July 7, 2005.
Now age 29, Lewthwaite met Lindsay, a British Muslim, when she was 17, according to the Daily Mail. A convert to Islam, she married him in 2002.
After the London attacks, she denied having knowledge of the plans. Later, Kenyan authorities said, she emerged in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa and became part of a terror cell linked to Al-Shabaab.
In December 2011, Kenyan authorities raided three homes in Mombasa, including one allegedly used by Lewthwaite, and arrested some people on suspicion of planning to destroy a bridge, a ferry and hotels frequented by Western tourists.
At Lewthwaite’s residence, investigators found the kind of bomb-making materials that were used in the London bombings, Kenyan counterterror police said. But Lewthwaite was not found.
A security guard who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity in 2012 said he saw a white woman leave the residence hours before the raid. Authorities have yet to catch up to her.
Kenyan authorities also suspect Lewthwaite of hatching a plot to break fellow Briton Jermaine Grant out of jail after he was arrested in connection with the alleged Mombasa plot.
