White widow Samantha Lewthwaite is 'alive and well' and living in southern Somalia with her jihadist husband, a wanted al-Qaeda suspect who calls himself Marco Costa, Kenyan sources said today.
In
a forged Mozambican passport obtained by MailOnline his picture clearly
identifies him as Fahmi Jamal Salim who has been on the run from Kenyan
police since he shot and killed two police officers in Nairobi in 2011.
Lewthwaite
and Salim also appear in a 'selfie' taken at their home. Police are
using these and pictures of their two children in a countrywide manhunt
for the couple.
Counter-terrorism
sources in Kenya revealed their updated profile of Lewthwaite in
response to claims from a Moscow news agency earlier this week that she
had been killed by sniper fire while fighting with a Ukrainian volunteer
battalion against pro-Russian rebels.
Kenyan
intelligence authorities are demanding to see Lewthwaite's body and say
they refuse to believe she has been part of any militia outside East
Africa.
In love: Lewthwaite and Fahmi Jamal Salim appear in a 'selfie' taken at their home in Somalia
Major threat: Lewthwaite, left, and her new husband Salim are major operatives in al-Shabaab
A
senior source said: 'We believe we currently have an accurate profile
of Lewthwaite's life and location. She has been linked to other jihad
suspects in the past but we now know that she is in a stable marriage
with Salim and has two young children with him.
'They
pose a major threat to security, working at a high level in the
al-Shabaab terror group and planning bombing raids in Somalia and Kenya
in retaliation for Kenya sending troops to Somalia to defeat
al-Shabaab.'
By marrying Salim Samantha Lewthwaite has joined a family steeped in Muslim extremism and the jihad.
Salim's
brother-in-law was notorious al-Qaeda recruiting officer Musa Dheere ,
shot dead at a roadblock in Mogadishu in 2011 alongside Fazul Mohamed, a
terror suspect with a $5m (£3.1m) bounty on his head. Dheere was wanted
for the bombing of American embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in
1998 when several hundred were killed.
A
comprehensive file seen by MailOnine reveals that Lewthwaite, 30,
married Salim in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2008 after meeting him
through a Muslim hate cleric she regularly visited in Long Lartin
Prison, Worcestershire, following the death of her first husband
Germaine Lindsay.
Lindsay was part of a suicide bomb plot which killed 52 people on the London underground in July, 2005.
Lewthwaite,
pregnant with his second child, told police at the time that she was
'horrified' to hear of her husband's activities, but was soon visiting
the cleric Abdullah al-Faisal in prison where he was held for four
years.
Al-Faisal has admitted that Lewthwaite asked him to find 'a young handsome devout Muslim ' to marry.
Growing up in jihad: Samantha Lewthwaite is believed to have two children with her husband Fahmi Jamal Salim
On the run:
Lewthwaite, pictured right on a false passport, has written of being a
good mother and wife in a file seen by Kenyan police
She
disappeared from British police radar and was next seen in December
2011 in the small town of Bakarani on Kenya's east coast where police
had swooped on a slum area to arrest suspected terrorists.
As
police sent her DNA and fingerprints to Scotland Yard overnight,
Lewthwaite fled. It was discovered later that when police confronted her
she was staying at her in-laws' house. Salim's widowed sister Naseem
and their mother lived there.
It
now emerges that Lewthwaite had met and married Salim, through the
cleric al- Faisal, in Johannesburg in 2008. They had false South African
identities and both worked in the city while planning their jihadist
activities.
Salim ran a medical supplies business while Lewthwaite was an accountant for a Halal pie-making factory.
They
are living within the protection of an extremely dangerous al-Shabaab
community and all we can do is wait for them to make a fatal mistake
She gave birth to two children in a Johannesburg clinic, completing their family of four, including Lindsay's son and daughter.
They
are now believed to be living in the Lower Shebelle area of southern
Somalia, an al-Shabaab stronghold , travelling by dhow – an Arab fishing
boat – to reach their counterpart jihadists in Mombasa – or crossing
the porous Kenyan border by vehicle at Kiungi town.
Lewthwaite
home-schools her four children and has written in her diaries of her
hope they will become jihadists. The secretive local al-Shabaab
community takes care of the children while their parents are away on
visits to networks in Kenya.
Lewthwaite
is considered an important banker/logistician for al-Shabaab. Until
recently she was a devoted follower of Ahmed Abdi Godane, the al-Shabaab
founder and spiritual leader who announced alliance to al-Qaeda in June
2011.
There
had been a $7m ( £4.2m) reward for information leading to his arrest.
Lewthwaite and her husband were part of his six-member terror cell.
Godane
was the mastermind behind the shocking armed raid on Nairobi's Westgate
shopping mall in October 2013, describing his militia's 67 murders
there as 'an epic battle written in blood by my fighters to change the
course of history'.
Lewthwaite
later openly tweeted her support and admiration for Godane. He was
killed two months ago in an American air strike on a convoy in southern
Somalia, and counter-terrorism police now fear that Lewthwaite and her
cohorts could be planning revenge strikes.
A
source told MailOnline: 'We have been tracking Lewthwaite and Salim for
four years now and we know a great deal about them. But they are living
within the protection of an extremely dangerous al-Shabaab community
and all we can do is wait for them to make a fatal mistake.
'If
we are able to arrest them we will be proud to produce a show trial
exposing their trail of murder and destruction throughout Kenya and
Somalia'.
No comments:
Post a Comment