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Samantha Lewthwaite

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Samantha Lewthwaite is a British woman known for her links to dangerous groups. She was born in 1983 in Banbridge, County Down. Her father was a soldier in the British Army. Later, the family moved to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. She went to school at The Elmhurst School and The Grange School. She also began studying politics and religion in London. As a teenager, she changed her religion to Islam. She took the name Sherafiyah during this time.

In 2002, she married a man named Germaine Lindsay. They used the names Asmantara and Jamal for their wedding. Three years later, Germaine was part of the 7/7 London bombings. He was involved in a bomb attack on a train. This attack killed 26 people at a tube station. At that time, Samantha was eight months pregnant with her second child. She was not charged with the attack. However, people said she knew the man who led the bombers.

After these events, Lewthwaite's life changed significantly. She is believed to have joined a group called Al-Shabaab. This is a militant group based in Somalia. Many people call her the "White Widow." This name came from the news media. It refers to her race and her status as a widow. She is accused of helping this group in many ways. This includes helping to find weapons or money for them.

To stay hidden, she used a fake identity. She used the name Natalie Faye Webb. She also used a fake passport from South Africa. In 2012, police in Nairobi, Kenya, issued an arrest warrant for her. They found that she had used a stolen identity. The real Natalie Webb was actually an English nurse. Lewthwaite had also lived in Johannesburg, South Africa. She worked as an IT specialist at a meat factory there. She even gave birth to a child in South Africa in 2010.

Police have worked hard to find her for many years. They have searched in places like Kenya and Tanzania. In 2012, a man named Jermaine Grant was arrested in Mombasa. He told police that the woman he was with was Lewthwaite. Since then, she has not been heard from for a long time. Her story shows how people can become involved in very serious crimes. It also shows how hard it is for police to find people using fake names.

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