The White Widow terrorist, also known as Samantha Lewthwaite, has been speculated to have been part of the Kenya mall attacks in which scores were killed — including several attackers.
However, authorities say that Lewthwaite — who was married to two separate and now deceased jihadists — has not been definitively linked to the attacks in Kenya. Fox reports :
“There have been conflicting reports about the identity of the attackers . Although there was reportedly a female militant killed, Kenya’s Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenkye said Monday that the dead militants were all men, but some had dressed as women… Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed told PBS’ Newshour that ‘two or three Americans’ and a British woman were among the militants, Reuters reported.”
Just 29, Lewthwaite has been dubbed the White Widow terrorist due to her connections to not one, but two dead militants. Having converted to Islam in her teens, the young woman from Northern Ireland was married to Jermaine Lindsay, a 7/7 attacker who perished in the bombings.
The mom of three then fled to Kenya , where she married a second man who later died. The Belfast Telegraph reports on a timeline for Lewthwaite’s alleged activities, explaining:
“[The White Widow terrorist] then married another jihadist while on the run in Africa where she became a leader of the al-Shabaab terror grouping… Lewthwaite later arranged the assassination of a terror rival in an attack that also claimed the life of her second husband, Habib Ghani. She did not even acknowledge the fact he had been murdered.”
While the White Widow terrorist has neither been definitely linked to the attack itself nor the dead attackers in Nairobi, witnesses report that an unarmed woman was among the attackers and gave orders for those with weapons to engage in violent acts at the mall in Kenya.