[siren wailing]
[suspenseful music]
[man 1] The 7th of July in 2005,
I remember it was a Thursday.
It was so crowded I didn't need
to hold onto anything, I could just
stand there and lean on
[scoffs] other people.
Within a few seconds of the train moving
off from King's Cross Station
um there was a
like a flash and then
total darkness.
[sharp ringing]
[newscaster] Breaking news
from the PA newswire
that there's been reports of an expl*si*n
in the East End of London.
[man 1] I knew instantly
it was a t*rror1st attack.
Twenty-five out of 52 innocent people
were k*lled in my carriage.
[newscaster 1]
Central London has been rocked
by a series of t*rror1st attacks.
[newscaster 2]
A number of people have died,
and they say among the injured
are many different nationalities.
[newscaster 1] Three hundred injured,
45 of them seriously.
[newscaster 3] Police confirmed expl*sives
were found there.
[newscaster 4] There is a suggestion that
the expl*si*n was caused
by a suicide b*mber.
Then that would be the first
suicide b*mber
to have struck in the United Kingdom.
[sinister music]
[man 2] Germaine was responsible
for the deaths of 26 people.
I started delving into his background
and found out that he was married
to Samantha Lewthwaite.
Samantha Lewthwaite,
known as the White Widow.
[female newscaster] Samantha was married
to one of the London bombers
and she's made a name for herself
as a terrorism mastermind.
[newscaster] She may now be
the most wanted woman in the world.
[sinister music]
She was everything.
[cheering]
She was planner
-[siren wailing]
-she was motivator, she was organizer
in the Al-Shabaab movement
and in general, in East Africa.
[man 4] She understood the nuances
of avoiding observation and surveillance.
And I think she got a kick out of it.
[man 5] She beat us.
We couldn't prosecute her.
We tried and failed.
[sirens wailing]
[woman 1] If I had an opportunity
to arrest her, I would.
But I don't think she's a woman
who will give up easily.
Neither am I.
[opening theme music]
[suspenseful music]
[female narrator]
Lewthwaite was named "the White Widow"
after the death of her husband,
Germaine Lindsay,
one of the London suicide bombers.
She's been on the run
for the last four years.
[indistinct chattering]
[sirens wailing]
[man 2] After the bombings
uh when the identities
of the t*rrorists became known
Samantha was under extreme pressure.
She had questions to answer.
No, not just to the police. To her friends
and family, people that knew her.
"What did you know about this, Samantha?"
[birds chirping]
[Pyatt] First time I met her,
we took her to a place
it was a manor house.
And the manor house rented out
a number of cottages in the grounds.
Rolling green fields,
there was a river running nearby.
So we were sitting outside on a lovely,
lovely hot day, expecting Samantha.
When she arrived in a in a taxi
with her, uh, newly-born child and--
we were quite surprised to see that
when she got out
that she had the full hi-- hijab on.
Which was massively out of keeping
with the, uh, local community
and the local area.
[click]
Eventually she agreed to, uh,
uncover her face.
Everybody wanted to talk to her.
Yes, it was a great scoop.
[suspenseful music]
[woman 3] She was a white western convert.
She painted herself as a naive victim
of her husband's crime.
She made the statement that
obviously, the bombings were abhorrent.
That she could not believe
that her husband was able to do this.
[chanting]
[Vale] The first time Samantha Lewthwaite
met Germaine Lindsay
was at a "stop the w*r" march.
[people shouting, protesting]
The fact that she met her husband
at one of these marches is significant.
[chanting]
[Vale] The resentment of British and US
invasion of Iraq
was one of the defining factors
for the group to conduct the 7/7 bombings.
She obviously has connections
with the sentiment
of why her husband and his group members
would want to carry out this attack.
We spent three days with her,
doing the interviewing.
The very fact that she'd been
intensively interviewed by the police
and no suspicion had been cast
on her story at all.
There was never allegations
that she was involved.
So everything kind of
fitted with her story
that she'd just been taken in.
In hindsight, when I look back at it,
she was clearly putting on an act.
But at the time
I believed every word of it.
[train chugging]
Samantha Lewthwaite played dumb,
if you like.
Uh, she played very like:
"I'm just the wife."
"Uh, there was nothing untoward
about, uh our relationship."
But, um, very quickly, um
we could get a bit of an idea
that some of the stories
people like Samantha Lewthwaite
were telling us, probably weren't true.
[sirens wailing]
[police radio chatter]
[Videcette] Some of the
Hasib Hussain's family, for example,
he was one of the other bombers,
you know, straight away,
they were on the phone:
"Our son is on a on a day trip down
in London today, we're worried about him."
Samantha Lewthwaite?
"No, I'm not-- I'm not bothered.
Seven days later I'll ring the police."
Why is she not thinking,
"My God, where's my husband?
I'm seven months pregnant.
I'm seven months pregnant,
yet my husband hasn't come home."
She named the child that was born
after the bombing, "Shahid."
Shahid means,
it's an honorific term for a a martyr.
You know,
she's called her child "martyr"
effectively, um, after and she's
supposed to be disgusted
about what her husband's done.
[camera clicking]
[Videcette] I really pressed hard
to have her arrested.
You know, I really, really wanted her
on the suspect list.
Sadly, the senior
investigating officer
felt that
there wasn't enough evidence to proceed.
And that the CPS would say no.
And I massively regret that she gets
this opportunity to k*ll other people.
Of course, I think about it
every single day.
[sea gulls squawking]
[Videcette] And then, quite clearly,
when you look at what happened in Mombasa.
She beat us.
[plane whizzing]
[car honking]
[crows cawing]
[traffic horns honking]
[man 6] We had the intelligence
that there were some guys
who were planning an attack in Mombasa.
So we needed to move fast
to preempt that kind of action.
Through our surveillance, we had already
known the houses where they were staying.
So we had to move to that house.
It was a two bedroom house.
It was an orphanage and
there was only a mattress on the floor.
And some containers.
They had acetone, hydrogen peroxide.
Power source, that is the battery.
We had a switch altimeter
We just automatically knew that these
were expl*sive making materials.
After analyzing some of the documents
found in that house
we were able to know that house
belonged to Germaine John Grant.
He was a UK citizen.
[shutter clicks]
[Otieno] We organized an operation
to arrest Grant.
In his confession,
Grant said that Samantha was the big fish.
She was the person who was financing
these guys and their operations
She was at the top.
I first heard about
Samantha Lewthwaite was because the Times,
rival newspaper in London,
that morning had splashed
with the story that Lewthwaite
had been linked to this terror cell
with the same materials
her ex-husband used
to detonate the bombs in London in 2005.
What seems to have happened is,
at some point
the police moved to arrest Germaine Grant
outside that house in Mombasa.
Now, there was an SMS that Grant I believe
sent from his phone, to the phone
registered to Samantha Lewthwaite
that said: "The lions are coming."
Or lions something like that,
right? So that's a warning.
So as the police are there,
she's running from the villa.
[sirens wailing]
We had to find all of the places
that we suspected these guys were.
[chopper whirring]
[Otieno] In one of the houses
was a white lady.
Kenyan police come to that house,
knock on the door,
Samantha opens the door.
She opened. She was very calm.
She was wearing a Muslim veil.
The kids were playing around the place.
[laughs]
"Can we speak to you?"
"Of course you can."
"Can we see your ID?"
"No problem."
Natalie Faye Webb,
"Hello, Mrs. Natalie."
That day, we looked at the passport.
It was her photo.
It was not a a false document.
She told us she was a South African,
uh, by the name Natalie Faye Webb.
So we didn't have any reason
to doubt that passport.
She went through this
perfectly relaxed, yeah.
Gave, got the passport back.
The police said, "Oh, we might come
and see you again." And left.
[dog barking]
[Otieno] That is when
we got further intelligence report that
Natalie Faye Webb was a fake name.
[dramatic music]
[Otieno] Immediately, we sent back
another team, back to the house.
Only to discover, she she's gone.
She's gone, of course.
[Otieno] We discovered some items.
The most interesting one was a UK
birth certificate of a lady by the name
Samantha Lewthwaite.
There's another thing
that interested us in that house.
We were able to get some documents that
gave us the location of another house.
[Pflantz] The upmarket, um
villa that she lived in
is very close to a strip of hotels
on a beautiful beach
North of Mombasa, called Shanzu.
In there, we later discovered
sacks of cash
in a black bin liner
ammunition, r*fles, and fake passports.
The plot was to hit hotels
during the high season at Christmas.
That would have been devastating.
We saw what happened in Tunisia.
We saw what happened in Paradise Hotel
in Mombasa, nine years earlier.
You can just walk in with a g*n and you're
gonna cause huge, huge, huge carnage.
[muezzin calling adhan]
[man] Mombasa's, uh
it's a big urban center.
And you have, uh, Western tourism,
scuba diving and beachside bikinis,
coexisting with um,
a large Muslim population.
And within that,
you have pockets of militancy.
There have been Islamist extremist
networks in Kenya
since the early 1990s.
Samantha Lewthwaite
chose to travel to Kenya
rather than to other
international hubs of
jihadist terrorism, such as Iraq or Syria.
Kenya obviously,
being an English-speaking country
may not have posed
such a linguistic barrier.
Not needing a visa for entry as well,
is also an important consideration.
[Pflantz] By June,
six months after she'd fled that house,
she walked back into the lion's den.
[man] My name is Peter Okono.
I was an eye witness
at Jericho bar attack.
[dogs barking]
[Okono]
The bar, by that time it was very popular.
The civil servants, the police,
people working in the government
liked to go to that place because
there was nice food
and then there was nice party.
[upbeat music playing]
[Okono] That night I arrived as always.
There was a football match and then
there was live music.
So the whole place was full with people.
-[crickets chirping]
-[somber music]
[faint indistinct voices]
Then I noticed a lady.
She was not looking like
our ladies around here.
She was more white.
She was in a hijab.
Normally, in these local places
it looks strange to see a white person.
[eerie music]
She was looking determined.
She was focused.
[eerie music intensifies]
Getting close to her,
I managed to see her face.
And realized she had blue eyes.
And before the dust could settle
[wham]
there was a blast.
[sirens wailing]
[indistinct conversations]
[Okono] This is the mark
which was left after the blast.
One person lost his life here.
[man] After that blast,
there was a commotion.
People were running helter-skelterly.
Some were running, uh,
to-- to save their lives.
[Okono] People were bleeding.
The people were injured.
There was blood everywhere.
On their faces, their hands.
So the ones I knew who died were three.
[interviewer]
Was it the person that you saw that night?
Yes.
That's the lady I saw
on that particular day.
And two or three people tell you the same.
There's a car park attendant
who said it was her.
So I printed four pictures.
Three random women,
white women off the internet.
And the Lewthwaite picture.
And he picked Lewthwaite.
Never seen again.
That is the last concrete identification
of Samantha Lewthwaite anywhere.
[man] This was a girl
young woman, who had decided
that this was her course in life.
Don't forget, as a girl,
as a young much younger woman
she would've been conscious of the edge
of danger, of the edge of terrorism.
Her father was involved in it.
She lived amidst it.
She was the product
of a British soldier
who was serving in Northern Ireland
on a long tour of duty over there.
He met an Irish girl.
-[screaming]
-[indistinct yelling]
[Mercer, in English]
The child was brought up over there.
[indistinct yelling]
[commotion]
[g*nshots]
[Pyatt] Her father uh
served with distinction
with allowances in Northern Ireland.
So he was fighting terrorism
on a day-to-day basis.
[bombs exploding]
So this was a child born
of a t*rror1st situation.
In terror. And eventually
turned to terror herself.
[suspenseful music]
[Pflantz] At some point,
the police found a laptop.
That was a huge coup
for intelligence services.
They got a lot out of that.
She's got photos of herself with her kids.
She's on WhatsApp, she's on Facebook.
She listens to Beyonce.
She's all of these things that the person
sitting next to you on the bus is.
And she's a jihadi who wants
to blow you up when you go on holiday.
[suspenseful music continues]
[Pflantz] The police found, um
a journal, a diary.
And there's a bunch of stuff in there,
there was a poem,
"Ode to Osama."
Thirty-four-line poem she had written
that was,
extolling the virtues of Osama bin Laden.
It was around this time
that she was photographed
with this guy, Abdul Wahid
her husband.
Abdul Wahid is a former
Kenyan military officer.
He then left the military,
allegedly later defected to Al-Shabaab.
[chanting]
[man, in English] Al-Shabaab movement
have made allegiances
with Al Quaeda in 2012.
And since then, has organized attacks
car bombings, suicide bombings,
land mines,
assassinations.
[chanting]
[Sanbalolshe] Because of their brutality,
the people fear them very much.
Samantha, she's one of the key
Al-Shabaab, or foreign fighter operatives.
It's important to her.
She's a very important role player.
It's a surprising climb up the ladder.
But it's not unheard of.
We've seen other jihadists,
foreign jihadists come to the region
and as they gain symbolic importance,
which Samantha did,
then they do actually become more senior
and start to exert their own influence.
[Vale] In her diary,
she says that her husband asks
what her children want to be
when they grow up.
And her oldest son and her oldest daughter
answer that they want to be mujahideen.
Warriors, fighters.
This is one of the main
domestic roles for women
within the jihadist network,
and particularly in Al-Shabaab.
She's raising and encouraging
all of her family members to participate
as a family activity,
in their dedication to the groups cause.
[Sanbalolshe] To have any children
with this kind of woman is very important.
Most of the time her husband dies
and then she remarries.
Because one of her roles
is to produce the future fighters,
produce future leaders.
[eerie music]
[music peaks then stops]
[birds twittering]
[Pyatt] Aylesbury's a small market town.
Samantha moved there when
she was about 11 years old.
She was born in Ireland. And she went
to school and grew up there.
The break up of her parents' marriage
affected her.
She didn't really side
with her father or mother.
And her best friend was a Muslim.
And she spent all her time with her.
[clock ticking]
[suspenseful music]
[man] This is where she hung around.
And she lived down here.
When I saw her as a teenager
she was a normal,
usual English flower child, you know.
[click]
[click]
[Hussain] Pale skin, light blue eyes.
She had normal friends.
She was a normal child.
The only thing you could say
was a change is she
uh she reverts to becoming a Muslim.
[Mercer] But that's the whole point.
She's the girl next door. She looks
very ordinary in British society.
There's nothing you can just say as:
"Here is a monster, here is a demon.
And it's clear because"
Well, it's not clear.
She's a very ordinary-looking girl.
Doesn't make her any less dangerous.
[sirens blaring]
[continuous g*nshots]
Oh, my God.
[people talking indistinctly]
[continuous g*nshots]
Well there's a series of shots
ringing out now
just outside the shopping center.
Black smoke we can see
coming from the top of the building.
We don't know what's going on.
Hello and welcome, I'm Peter Dobby
with the BBC World News. Our top stories:
Gunmen opened fire inside a shopping mall
in the Kenyan capital.
The Red Cross says at least 22 are dead.
Dozens more are injured.
[g*nshots continue]
[newscaster continues] The government says
it could be dealing with a terror attack.
But has urged people not to speculate.
[Bryden] What happened
at the Westgate Mall was
a classic Al-Shabaab attack.
A complex attack
using inghimasi, or suicide gunmen.
Four of them
approached the Westgate Mall
[g*nshots]
[g*nshots continue]
and entered the mall
from two directions:
the upper floor and the main entrance.
One team started throwing grenades.
They both opened fire and then
worked their way through the mall
[g*nf*re continues]
[Bryden] k*lling people that they found
inside the structure.
[people speaking indistinctly]
Sixty-one civilians lost their lives
in the attack.
[woman wailing]
Six security officers
also made the ultimate sacrifice
to defeat the criminals.
Intelligence reports
had suggested that a British woman
and two or three American citizens
may have been involved in the attack.
[sirens wailing]
[Videcette] We kind of didn't really
understand Islamism and Islamic terrorism
until 9/11.
We started to become aware of these
kind of people. They're spouting
things against our country.
But some of them
are born in this country.
Why are they behaving like this?
[preacher reciting prayers]
[Videcette] Samantha Lewthwaite,
very quickly,
she associated with extremist circles.
Straight away.
[preaching in Arabic]
[in English] These eight preachers
were saying things
which were extremely dangerous.
[in English] Don't play games
in the globe anymore.
And you, European people,
you will pay the most.
[Mercer] If Samantha Lewthwaite
was looking to do something radical,
something dangerous, something
exciting, something lethal
well, here we are. It's on a plate.
[Sky News opening theme playing]
Just want to bring you some breaking news
concerning the shopping mall seige
in Kenya.
The Kenyan Interior Minister says
that they are holding eight suspects.
On our broadcast tonight, WANTED.
An international arrest warrant has been
issued for the woman who's been called
"the White Widow." Question is: "Was she
among the attackers at the mall in Kenya?"
[newscaster] And Interpol has just issued
a worldwide red notice
trying to track down Samantha Lewthwaite.
[Bryden] By the time of the attack
on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi,
it seems her career picked up.
So post-Westgate,
I don't think it's particularly surprising
that her name has become
so prominent
um, and that she is among
one of the most wanted people
in the world.
What also adds to her prestige,
notoriety, and infamy is the fact
that she's still at large.
[Pyatt] Interpol is looking for her.
Uh CIA, MI5, MI6,
they're all looking for her.
She's clearly being protected.
She's clearly in hiding.
[Bryden] Somalia and Kenya
have a long border.
The key is to have contacts
who will guide you
to the border and across
without encountering police posts
or checkpoints.
As soon as you cross the border,
at least in some areas
you're in Al-Shabaab territory.
If the messages have been passed
she would've been picked up
on the other side of the border
and then taken, uh, to a safe area
and probably a safe house
within that area
where she would've dropped off the radar.
[whirring]
[suspenseful music]
[woman 1] Somebody like Samantha, who has
a huge, uh international warrant on her
will definitely be taken.
[indistinct voices over radio]
[woman 1] The reason why I don't like her.
There's nothing to like about a woman
who chooses to be destructive.
We're both from the UK, we're both
the same age, we're both two women.
Involved in security, though she's
insecurity rather than actual security.
So she's touching me on several levels.
As a woman, as a Muslim,
as a security officer.
Of course, it it's irritating,
to say the least.
[in Somali] Take the main road.
The small streets are blocked.
[on radio, in Somali] Okay boss.
[Hussein, in English] Of course,
you remain a target.
I've survived two assassination attempts.
Uh there is still a high price on me,
but uh I believe you only live once
and if you're gonna live then make sure
that your life means something.
[traffic horn honking]
[people speaking indistinctly]
[Hussein] This station here
is a very important junction for us
and the principal threat
is always an expl*si*n.
We have an Al-Shabaab
terrorism problem here.
So for us we specifically focus
on trying to understand
how Al-Shabaab works.
How they operate, what they do,
how they recruit,
and so on and so forth.
[Sanbalolshe]
Of course, it is very important
to arrest somebody like Samantha.
To extract information from her
is also important.
And she's also dangerous. There is also
that we are removing a threat.
[speaking Somali]
[Hussein] I don't see Samantha
as different from any other mafia boss
to be honest with you.
There's financial interest,
there's popularity interest.
There's everything, but religion.
[muezzin calling adhan]
[indistinct conversations]
[Sanbalolshe] She knows she's wanted.
She's under big surveillance,
so she doesn't stay in one place.
She has to move around a lot.
[Bryden] In areas under Shabaab control,
Al-Shabaab is routinely
executing people accused of spying.
So for someone to denounce Samantha
pass information about her whereabouts,
is very risky.
[Sanbalolshe] We have been monitoring
her movement and her presence
sometimes at the border
between Somalia and Kenya.
Actually there was a time
we were almost closing down on her.
[birds cawing]
[Sanbalolshe] She was in Jilib.
But, uh it's not easy to arrest her
because she's in
Al-Shabaab controlled territory
We don't have
those operational capabilities.
She's out of reach, basically.
We were not able to use, uh,
drones against her
because she is a British citizen
and it is not
legally allowed by the UK law
to do this kind of assassination.
With British law, the focus is to get
uh the person, not k*ll the person.
Knowing where she is doesn't mean
that she can be reached
by law enforcement
or intelligence agencies
without, uh, also taking real risks
um, or causing
a lot of civilian casualties.
So monitoring her may be the best that
the intelligence community could do.
[click]
[click]
She has dedicated her life
to what she is: a t*rror1st.
And she must be happy
with what she's doing.
Um but she's got no way back.
I mean, that is it.
It means she can't travel freely anywhere.
The Brits
and the international authorities
are not going to let her once again
disappear for five years and then
pop up on another fake passport.
[Hussein] For somebody like Samantha,
she cannot survive in Somalia.
These people have a "sell by" date.
[Videcette] She's obviously developed
a trade craft that keeps her safe.
Not talking on the telephone, coded
messages passed between individuals.
But I know one thing
she won't survive forever.
She certainly won't.
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