SOMALIA — Samantha Lewthwaite, also known as the White Widow, was the mastermind of at least 400 deaths, including last month’s slaughter of Christians at a university in Kenya, Somali security chiefs said.
According to the International Business Times, the British national has become the world’s most wanted woman after she climbed the ranks in the terror group al-Shabaab.
Since becoming such a key figure, Lewthwaite is believed to be responsible for car bombings, suicide attacks and other terror raids.
It was reported she even recruited women and children of poor families to become suicide bombers.
She paid the families less than $500 for the acts.
Another horrifying report indicated Lewthwaite pumped brain-washed boys, some as young as 15, with heroin and then sent them to their deaths as suicide bombers.
“This lady sits at the right hand of the leader directing attacks,” one security chief told the Mirror UK. ” She is an evil person, but a very clever operator.”
“We think this lady is sitting at the right hand of the leader directing attacks,” he continued. “She does not carry out attacks herself as she is too important but is responsible for many, many deaths – hundreds.”
The official went on to say that MI6 and other agencies were working to capture her.
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.
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 attacks, Kenyan counterterror police said.
