Is this the face of the most wanted woman in the world?

By MAMAMIA NEWS

They are calling her the ‘White Widow’.

British woman Samantha Lewthwaite is just shy of her thirtieth birthday. The daughter of a soldier, Lewthwaite grew up in Buckinghamshire in South East England.

She met a man in an online chat room at the age of seventeen. They liked one another and three years later the pair were married.

One year after that, Lewthwaite’s husband intentionally blew himself up in the London underground bombings, killing dozens of people and injuring even more.

And now it seems that she could be the terrorist mastermind behind this week’s Kenyan mall massacre.

Kenya is a fast becoming a battleground between extremist Islamists and the western world.

Anti-terror authorities in the country have recounted stories from survivors who described a white woman with covered hair, directing the terror activity taking place in the Nairobi shopping mall.

While there is no confirmation yet that Lewthwaite was present during the attacks, her connection to the terror group responsible is well established. Lewthwaite has also been linked to all-female terrorist training camps in nearby Somalia.

The Daily Mail reports:

Lewthwaite is one of Al Qaeda’s main recruiters in East Africa and is an official spokesman for Al Shabaab (The People), the terrorist group behind the horror in Nairobi. As well as railing against ‘infidels in the West’, Lewthwaite had previously used a Twitter account to denounce a rival foreign terrorist in the text-speak of a teenager.

Samantha Lewthwaite and her husband Jermaine Lindsay

‘Fyi [for your information] sam lewthwaite thinks u r a irritating obnoxious contemptible little Muj PRAT,’ she wrote. (‘Muj’ is a contraction of mujahideen – a jihadist). The object of her anger was Omar Shafik Hammami, a former student from Alabama. Last week he was shot dead in an ambush by terrorists loyal to the White Widow.

‘May his fate serve as a lesson to all those who want to follow in his footsteps as a poster boy for jihad,’ Lewthwaite wrote gleefully on Twitter. To add to her name for ruthlessness, the White Widow did not mention in her tweets that a British man reputed to be her second husband was also killed in the ambush.

Al Shabaab are an extremist Islamist force who originated in Somalia, where they have attempted to impose a very strict interpretation of Sharia Law; by force where they have deemed necessary.

In nearby Kenya, officials supported by the British and American governments have been fighting Al Shabaab in Somalia, while attempting to maintain peace in their own country as well.

The atrocities in Kenya this past week have been brutal and terrifying.

Terrorists entered a suburban shopping mall in the capital Nairobi last Saturday afternoon. They opened fire on shoppers with AK-47s and began tossing grenades around with a blatant disregard for human life.

Terrified civilian shoppers took shelter in toilets and in a movie cinema. There are reports that the wounded were quietly ferried out of the building in shopping trolleys.

The killers told the shoppers who remained alive that all Muslims would be free to go. They then reportedly carried out ‘tests’ to see whether or not their hostages were telling the truth about their religious beliefs.

Shoppers were asked if they could name the Prophet Mohammed’s mother and recite key passages from the Koran.

Those who couldn’t, were executed.

Sixty eight people have been reported dead. They ranged from children as young as two years old, through to elderly shoppers aged in their late 70s. One Australian man, an architect who designed an aid building in Nairobi, is amongst the dead.

It is believed the hostage situation that has continued since Saturday afternoon, is finally coming to a close. Kenyan officials are reportedly doing their final checks of the mall to ensure all hostages and terrorists have been identified.

The victims and all of their families are in our thoughts today.