(Mirror UK)
25 Sep 2013
Her family have struggled to deal with the mum-of-three’s disappearance after husband killed 26 people in the 7/7 London bombings
As a soldier who served in Northern Ireland during the 1970s at the height of the Troubles, Andy Lewthwaite understands the dreadful toll of terror attacks.
But today he is carrying the burden of being the father of the world’s most reviled international terrorist.
His daughter Samantha – dubbed the White Widow – is believed to have played a key role in planning the Westgate mall massacre in Nairobi.
And she could even have died in a firefight with Kenyan soldiers.
Last night experts were still trying to determine if a white woman’s body found among militants was the 29-year-old.
For years her family, of Aylesbury, Bucks, have struggled to deal with the mum-of-three’s disappearance after husband Germaine Lindsay killed 26 people in the 7/7 London bombings.
Now builder Andy, 57, who has two other children with Lewthwaite’s mum Christine Allen, has to come to terms with how his happy little girl became apparently capable of slaughtering children.
One neighbour said: “Andy is aware of how appalling indiscriminate shootings are.
"For him to imagine his own daughter is involved in this is very painful.
“He has been very dignified. He served his country; his daughter is apparently tarnishing both his reputation and his country’s reputation.”
While the family have refused to speak out, neighbours recall the White Widow as a different person.
Businessman Niknam Hussein, 50, met Lewthwaite when she was a teenager.
He said: “She was quiet and shy. There was nothing extraordinary about her. The frightening thing is she was perfectly normal.”
He went on: “How does a housewife and mother suddenly become the mastermind of an attack in East Africa? She came from a close family.
“Even after 7/7 they were still together under police protection, her and her parents.
“They are mystified and angry. They are astonished as I am.”
Yesterday, the strain on the family became clear when Lewthwaite’s grandmother Elizabeth Allen, of Banbridge, Co Down, was admitted to hospital because of heart problems.
Joan Baird, a councillor in Banbridge, who knows the family, said: “Mrs Allen, at 85, is too ill to cope with all this.
"Her health is poor and continuing to fail as a result of the pressure and all the news reports about her granddaughter.”
Lewthwaite’s transformation into one of terror group al-Shabaab’s figureheads on the run in East Africa is something few can comprehend.
She was still at primary school when her family moved from her birthplace in Northern Ireland to Buckinghamshire. Her parents split in 1995.
Raj Khan, an Aylesbury councillor, said: “I knew her when she was a child.
"She was very innocent, lacking confidence, shy and very easy to get on with. She was a follower not a leader.
“That’s why I find it absolutely amazing that she is supposed to be the head of an international criminal terrorist organisation.”
As a teenager at Aylesbury’s Grange School, Lewthwaite became friendly with a local Muslim family who helped her to convert to Islam.
Her interest in religion developed when she enrolled on a degree course in politics and the study of religions in 2002 at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
She met Jamaican-born Muslim convert Lindsay through an Islamic internet chatroom the same year and they married a few months later.
They lived in Lindsay’s home town of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, but moved back to Aylesbury in September 2003.
Six months later, their first child, a boy, was born. Their second child, a daughter, was born after 7/7.
After being quizzed over the 2005 London suicide attacks, in which 52 people lost their lives, the White Widow returned to her family, who were convinced of her innocence.
Andy, together with Lewthwaite’s older brother Allan and younger sister Sabrina, condemned the bombings, but were shocked about “loving husband” and “brilliant father” Lindsay’s role.
Lewthwaite vanished soon after her third child was fathered by Habib Ghani, of Hounslow, West London, in 2009.
Ghani was shot dead in Somalia two weeks ago in what was understood to be a row between al-Shabaab factions.
It is thought this could have spurred grieving Lewthwaite to urge terror chiefs to push ahead with the Kenya atrocity.
And it is also believed to be no coincidence that the Nairobi attack came on the eve of the trial of another al-Shabaab Briton, Jermaine Grant, in Mombasa.
The White Widow and Grant allegedly planned to bomb Kenyan beach resorts before police swooped on their rented flat in December 2011.
Cops found bomb-making equipment and chemicals but Lewthwaite escaped
The only clues about her whereabouts since have come through her occasional taunts against the West on Twitter.
