Archive: Samantha Lewthwaite, the 'White Widow'

From the TI archives — originally published September 2014. This piece concerns terrorism; all claims describe allegations and charges, not convictions.

Samantha Louise Lewthwaite was born in Northern Ireland in 1983 and raised Christian. At 17, devastated by her parents' divorce, she converted to Islam — drawn, reports at the time said, by the religion's emphasis on family bonds.

At 22, she married Germaine Lindsay, a Jamaican-born convert, in Aylesbury, England, in October 2002. They had met in an Islamic chat room. On July 7, 2005, Lindsay blew himself up on the King's Cross train in the 7/7 London bombings — the worst terror attack on British soil.

Lewthwaite, pregnant with their second child and their first only 14 months old, publicly condemned the attacks. She told the Sun — selling her story for a reported £30,000 — that she had no knowledge of her husband's involvement: she was horrified, her world had fallen apart, her thoughts were with the victims' families. At that moment, she was a grieving widow.

Then she disappeared. She is suspected of moving to Kenya around 2008. Kenyan authorities allege she became an operative of Al-Shabaab, the Somalia-based militant group — accused of orchestrating grenade attacks on non-Muslim places of worship and a 2012 attack on football fans watching Euro 2012 in a Mombasa bar. After the 2013 Westgate mall attack, speculation swirled that she was involved, though that was never confirmed. Interpol issued a red notice for her in 2012.

The press dubbed her "The White Widow," and her story took on a Homeland-like quality: the grieving widow who may have become one of the deadliest terror suspects alive.

Twelve years after this piece ran, Lewthwaite remains at large and still wanted. The arc stands as a study in how little anyone — not the media, not the security services, not the family who sold their sad story to a tabloid — truly knows about radicalization.