Kenyan police hunt 7/7 bomber widow

LONDON – Kenyan police are hunting a terrorism suspect who may be the widow of one of the 7/7 London suicide bombers.

An official in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, confirmed that a warrant has been issued for a woman who has used several identities, one of which is Samantha Lewthwaite, wife of Germaine Lindsay, The Independent reports.

Lindsay was one of four British men who detonated home-made bombs in London on 7 July 2005. His device exploded on a packed London Underground train, killing half of the 52 victims of the attacks.

Kenyan counter-terrorism police are investigating whether Lewthwaite, 28, originally from Buckinghamshire in south-east England, was a member of a terror unit affiliated to the radical Somali Islamist group Al Shabaab that planned to strike in Mombasa over Christmas, according to The Guardian.

She reportedly evaded capture when police raided a home in the city in late December, and has been travelling with three children on a fake South African passport.

London’s Metropolitan Police and the Foreign Office are not commenting on the matter, though Scotland Yard said it had recently sent officers to Kenya to assist investigators with a terrorism-related incident.

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Linsday and Lewthwaite converted to Islam in their teens but received no formally recognized education in the religion. They married in 2002, having initially met through an Internet chatroom and then face to face at rally against the impending invasion of Iraq, according to the BBC.

Lewthwaite has never been accused of involvement in the 7/7 attacks, and in a subsequent interview said she had no idea her husband had been planning the strike.

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