Samantha Lewthwaite, 32, the world’s most wanted woman, is believed to have orchestrated last month’s bloodbath at a university in Kenya in which 148 Christian students were shot to death, officials said.
The massacre at Garissa University College pushed the death toll Lewthwaite is responsible for to more than 400 since she joined the Al Shabab terrorist group around 2005, anti-terror officials told The Mirror of Britain.
“She is an evil person but a very clever operator,” a senior Somali anti-terror officer told the newspaper.
Lewthwaite, a mother of four, has bolted to the top Al Shabab, becoming the second-in-command to the Al Qaeda splinter group’s boss, Ahmad Umar, officials said. “This lady sits at the right hand of the leader directing attacks,” a Kenyan security chief said.
Lewthwaite is suspected of recruiting teenagers and women for suicide bombing missions, coaxing them into her diabolical plans by paying their desperate families bribes of less than $500, sources told The Mirror. “She does not carry out attacks herself as she is too important but is responsible for many, many deaths — hundreds,” a top officer in Somalia’s National Intelligence told the paper.
Officials suspect she masterminded an attack in the Somali capital of Mogadishu in February in which a London resident blew herself up, killing 25 innocent people. “She uses children to kill for her after giving money to their families,” the Somali intelligence official said.
It is believed the White Widow has also sent boys as young as 15 on suicide missions after shooting them up with heroin. “The lady has moved up the ranks. She is one of the most important figures in the terror group,” said a top Somali officer.
Lewthwaite, the daughter of a former Northern Ireland soldier, converted to Islam in the mid-1990s. Her husband, Germaine Lindsay, was among the killers who blew themselves up in coordinated suicide bomb attacks in London on July 7, 2005, that killed 52 victims.
DAI KUROKAWA/EPA
The attacks at Garissa University College in Kenya pushed the death toll Lewthwaite is responsible for to more than 400. Pictured, a woman is rescued from a building where the attacks took place.
Following the London bombings, Lewthwaite fled to Somalia and joined up with Al Shabab.
In 2013, she surfaced as the mastermind behind the Westgate Mall massacre in Nairobi that left 67 people dead. Lewthwaite’s murderous reputation has left her with a huge target on her back, with security agencies in 200 countries on the hunt for her.
She narrowly escaped being killed by a U.S. drone attack on March 12 near Diinsoor, Somalia. “The lady does not sleep in the same place twice,” a Somali official told The Mirror. “She moves around all the time.”