Samantha Lewthwaite

‘White widow’ rented property in South Africa

A British woman thought to be linked to the Nairobi mall attacks used an assumed South African identity to take out bank loans and rent property in Johannesburg, local media reported Wednesday.

Samantha Lewthwaite — wanted by Kenyan police for alleged involvement in a separate terror plot — used the known alias Natalie Faye Webb to rent at least three properties and run up debts of $8,600 (6,400 euros), according to the eNews Channel Africa (eNCA).

The 29-year-old Muslim convert — nicknamed the “White Widow” because her husband was among the 2005 London suicide bombers — signed rental leases around Johannesburg, but it was unclear whether she lived at any of the premises.

According to credit records released by eNCA, she was listed as living in the city’s predominantly South Asian neighbourhood of Mayfair for four years.

Kenya’s foreign minister has said a British woman was among the Islamist attackers who shot dead dozens of people at a Nairobi shopping mall from Saturday.

President Uhuru Kenyatta later said the reports could not be confirmed.

But Kenyan authorities issued a wanted notice for Lewthwaite after she entered the country from Tanzania’s northeastern Lunga and Namanga border posts in February and August 2011 using a South African passport in the name of Webb.

Two months later South African clothing stores signalled debt defaults worth almost $2,700.

In August 2012 a Johannesburg court issued an order against her for defaulting on $2,800 debt with South Africa’s First Rand Bank.

Lewthwaite was married to Germaine Lindsay, one of four suicide bombers who attacked the London transport network in July 2005, killing 52 people.

A local terror expert and academic said earlier this week that she regularly travels to South Africa and stayed in South Asian suburbs of Johannesburg earlier this year.

However residents either denied Lewthwaite had lived at the cited addresses or could not remember having seen her.

Close to a bustling street with shops where women dressed in headscarves walked with their children, the structure of a new building now stands in the yard where two houses were demolished over a year ago.

“I have not seen her here before,” said a neighbour who has lived across the road for seven years, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A man who identified himself only as Junaid, and said he was redeveloping the property — bought from a 65-year-old owner two years ago — denied an English woman had lived there.

On the other side of the city in the leafy suburb of Bromhof, neighbours who have lived since 2008 across the road from the house Lewthwaite was said to have rented, also could not recall her living there. – AFP

Hawks investigating al-Shabab

The Hawks’ crimes against the state unit are investigating alleged activities by al-Shabab in South Africa.

This follows revelations by Kenyan authorities that one of the suspects in the devastating attack on a Nairobi shopping centre has been travelling on a false South African passport.

Al-Shabab, based in Somalia and linked to global terror network al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack on the Westgate Mall in Kenya, which claimed at least 72 lives.

Hawks spokesman Captain Paul Ramaloko confirmed on Tuesday that the police are conducting an investigation.

There has been running gun battles, bomb blasts and grenade attacks in the mall since Saturday. Eleven terrorists were in custody. The death toll is expected to rise.

A South African woman is feared to be among the victims not yet identified, South Africa’s ambassador to Kenya, Ratubatsi Moloi, told Eyewitness News.

The British national Samantha Lewthwaite, who was married to 2005 London suicide bomber Jermaine Lindsay, had been using a possibly falsified South African passport bearing the name Natalie Faye Webb to enter Kenya.

She allegedly entered the country on the passport last year with her three children. An arrest warrant was issued for her this year after allegations she was plotting attacks on Kenyan coastal resorts.

Beeld reported yesterday that Lewthwaite had visited South Africa several times.

South African police sources said Lewthwaite had recently become “someone of interest” to the Hawks investigators probing al-Shabab for allegedly raising funds and possibly recruiting jihadists in the country.

Home Affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa said the necessary steps had been taken to ensure the “wrong” elements could not “obtain our passports for use in their nefarious activities”.

Though there is a sizeable Somali community in South Africa, Somali Association of SA vice-chairman, Ibrahim Shuriye, said al-Shabab had “no support from our community”.

“They claim religion as their motive, but religion does not teach the use of violence,” he said. – timeslive/AFP

Daughter of British soldier said to be involved in Kenyan terror attack

Kenyan officials have given contradictory statements about whether a British woman may have been involved in the attack on the Westgate mall which has left at least 62 people dead.

Samantha Lewthwaite, a 29-year-old Muslim convert, nicknamed the “White Widow” is in the spotlight after a Kenyan minister said a British woman was among the Islamist attackers who shot dead dozens of people at a Nairobi shopping mall.

Her alleged involvement and South African passport was reported on a pro-Israeli website.

The Briton was married to Germaine Lindsay, one of four suicide bombers who attacked the London transport network in July 2005, killing 52 people.

The mother-of-three has been on the run in East Africa for around two years and is wanted by Kenyan police for alleged involvement in a terror plot.

Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed told US public broadcaster PBS that a British woman was among those to blame, along with two or three American men.

“And she has, I think, done this many times before,” Mohamed said, without identifying her.

But Kenyan Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku earlier denied that any of the insurgents were women, saying some male attackers “had dressed like women.”

The British government refused to be drawn on suggestions one of its citizens was among the attackers.

The daughter of a British soldier, Lewthwaite professed herself appalled when her Jamaican-born husband detonated a rucksack full of explosives and blew himself up on a London Underground train on July 7, 2005, killing 26 people.

She was pregnant with their second child at the time.

“I totally condemn and am horrified by the atrocities which occurred in London,” she said, describing Lindsay as “a good and loving husband and a brilliant father, who showed absolutely no sign of doing this atrocious crime”.

Lewthwaite had met Lindsay in an Internet chat forum when she was 17, having converted to Islam two years earlier.

Described as a bubbly teenager, schoolfriends said she had an ordinary upbringing in the market town of Aylesbury, northwest of London.

Kenyan police released wanted notices saying she was travelling on a false South African passport under the name Natalie Faye Webb, accompanied by her three children, a girl and two boys.

The children would be now roughly aged between seven and 12.

South African authorities said they were carrying out a “thorough investigation” into the passport issue.

Raffaello Pantucci, a terror expert at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, said Lewthwaite had acquired a “semi-mythical status”.

“I don’t think we’ve had any concrete evidence of her being involved in this incident,” he said.

“But the fact of her being mentioned in this context is not surprising because of her connections.”

Rumours abound that Lewthwaite is behind the Twitter handle @MYC_Press — Kenya’s radical Muslim Youth Centre — which regularly comments on Kenyan extremism, as well as entering into a war of words with rival Islamists.

American Islamist Omar Hammami — who fought in Somalia but was killed by former Shehab comrades this month — in April scoffed via Twitter that she was just “a girl in Kenya”.

MYC_Press in turn replied: “Sam Lewthwaite thinks ur (you are) a irritating obnoxious contemptible little Muj (mujahedeen) PRAT.”

MYC_Press — which has been notably silent since the attack began on Saturday — also told AFP in April that Lewthwaite had “returned to Luton”, a town outside London and close to where she grew up. – Sapa/AFP