The White Widow: Searching For Samantha

This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find disturbing

September 21st last year, Nairobi, Kenya.

Islamist gunmen rampage through a shopping mall.

They murder in cold blood at least 67 innocent people,

including children.

As the gunmen run amok, a 29-year-old white English woman,

the widow of one of the 7/7 suicide bombers,

is accused of masterminding the attack.

Interpol quickly add her to the list of the world's most wanted

criminals, but who is Samantha Lewthwaite?

I would say she was your typical innocent, British, English rose.

But this English rose married a suicide bomber.

She must have known a lot of what was going on

and chose not to disclose it.

Her and her bomber husband's inspiration was an Islamist cleric

imprisoned for inciting murder.

He speaks about her for the first time.

She lost her husband in the 7/7 bombing, so I would think

she would be sad, but when she came she was jovial, she looked happy.

The persona that she came across is like it's business as usual for her.

Life goes on.

Now she's on the run, evading the police through

a series of African countries.

My children have said they've taken sweets from her.

I didn't think she was dangerous.

She was always dressed with her veil, hooded over.

She had a big old white Mercedes, which you notice.

The newspapers would be knocking on people's doors,

she just said to me don't say anything.

Can this English rose really be some kind of terrorist mastermind?

Or is she more concerned with shopping and slimming?

The Islamic domestic goddess that she describes in her diary.

When a man comes home, wife beautiful, food prepared,

kids clean, this is like Halal magic.

But can anyone find the White Widow?

Samantha, Samantha, Samantha, if she can keep the intelligence services

of the world on their toes for so long, then she's a super lady.

I wish I knew where she was, I want to propose to her.

'The 22nd September, 2013.

'I'm in the air, destination Nairobi.

'We're 24 hours into the Westgate siege. The shooting continues.

'Witnesses say the gunmen asked shoppers if they're Muslim -

'can they recite the Koran?

'Unbelievers are shown no mercy.

'As I arrive, a Somali Islamist group, al-Shabab,

'an affiliate of al-Qaeda,

'claim responsibility for the attack that's still going on.'

'For the last four months,

'I've been on the trail of Samantha Lewthwaite, the White Widow.

'Now, everyone's after her.

'Some of the British press claim that she's inside,

'masterminding the operation.'

And do you think Samantha Lewthwaite is inside?

After four days, the siege ends.

The four Somali gunmen are believed dead.

There are no signs that Samantha Lewthwaite was involved,

but rumours don't stop.

There are reports of her masterminding shadowy plots

in Yemen, and that she's linked to elephant poaching in order

to raise money for al-Shabab.

And there's even an Islamist Twitter account where she's supposed

to say things like, "In Islam there's no choice,

"it's not like, do I watch EastEnders or Corrie tonight?"

Is she a terrorist, or just a make-believe she-devil,

and what strange journey has this suburban English schoolgirl taken?

Samantha Lewthwaite's story begins in the Home Counties

town of Aylesbury.

Born in 1983, she lived in a terraced house with her mum

and dad, a former soldier who fought in Northern Ireland

and then went into the building trade.

Her best friend from childhood was a young Muslim girl who

lived across the street.

Samantha became a fixture in their home.

She was a young girl curious about the teachings of the Koran.

Ramadan is the month chosen by God for Muslims to fast.

Allah loves those who fast.

As she grew up, Samantha explored her interest in Islam.

She'd go to the neighbouring families' parties

and religious events.

One member of the extended family

was the one-time mayor of Aylesbury, Raj Khan.

Samantha was one of very few white young girls who dared to move

over to the other side.

I would say she was your typical innocent, British, English rose,

she was your average British girl,

playing, hopping and skipping with the other kids at norm.

Aged 12, in 1996, she went to The Grange School.

I've contacted dozens of her school mates and teachers.

Many are embarrassed by their association with Samantha,

but surprisingly they also don't want to talk on camera,

because they liked her, and want to protect her memory.

The picture I'm given is of a compassionate teenager

who seemed to care desperately about social justice.

And then, in her A-level year, 9/11, and the invasion of Afghanistan.

It was an odd time perhaps to be drawn towards Islam, but many were.

9/11 happened, Muslims were on the news,

Muslims are getting arrested, Muslims are getting this -

people who said they hate Muslims, whatever, they said no, no,

I want a Koran, I want Islam, I want to know about Islam, da da da.

So, a lot of people wanted to know about Islam

after 9/11, which is a very, for me, a very strange thing.

Aged 18 a year after 9/11, Samantha got an A in

A level religious studies and won a place at London University.

Only then did she formally convert to Islam.

All praises are for Allah alone. Him alone we worship,

and he alone we ask for help.

May the peace and blessings of Allah

be upon the messenger of Allah and all his companions.

Aylesbury's Muslim community seems moderate, peaceful and decent.

It doesn't seem to be the place to foment the ideas of holy war.

Well, I don't think that there is anybody at all in the Aylesbury

area that I have heard or know about that would be engaged with

any kind of promoting jihadis.

But from Aylesbury there was already a long-established

and well-trodden path towards different kinds of Islamic ideas,

and that story begins in the strangest of places.

18 in the charts, with 20 Seconds To Comply,

this is Silver Bullet.

20 seconds to comply!

In the early 1990s, of all places,

Aylesbury played an important part in British hip-hop.

Two hip-hop crews, Caveman and Silver Bullet, raced up the charts.

Aylesbury was becoming like, yeah, what's happening?

Aylesbury, Aylesbury's kind of popping at the moment.

It's not the Bronx.

No, it's not the Bronx, but that's showing you,

that's showing you, though, that, yeah, there was a time.

Foreshadowing Samantha's choice,

a few of the dancers and DJs from these hip-hop crews

who were brought up as Christians converted to Islam.

A large majority of Afro-Caribbean African Muslims in the UK

in the '90s who converted to Islam were influenced by hip-hop

and influenced by Malcolm X.

Ismael Lea South was also a new convert at this time,

and an acquaintance of the Aylesbury rappers and DJs.

Because Aylesbury's a big Indo-Pakistani community,

so a lot of the Afro-Caribbean/mixed race

and white English as well who embrace Islam from that area, many

of them, they could not fit in with the Indo-Pakistani brand of Islam -

they just never feel comfortable.

Aylesbury crew, they found London more vibrant, so a lot of them

came to London, because London was starting to have more

English-speaking imams, scholars and learned people.

And some members of those crews came to listen to a particularly

fiery Jamaican preacher called Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal.

"Al-Baraa" means to recognise who your enemies are

and to hate them and to exterminate them in their endeavour

to get rid of your deen al-Islam.

Every week hundreds of people, including some from Aylesbury,

would attend Sheikh al-Faisal's lectures,

jimmas, at this north London community centre.

Yeah, Sheikh Faisal, his jimma, yeah, yeah, yeah,

he's talking about current issues, he's relating it to the Koran and

hadiths and he's speaking English - whoa, that's the jimma to go.

It was a group of them, I think,

two car loads who used to come there from High Wycombe and Aylesbury.

I remember them by face, but... I had so many friends or associates

in the UK, it's difficult to remember all their names.

Samantha Lewthwaite seemed also to have followed this path.

In the early 2000s she passed on a DVD of Sheikh al-Faisal's sermons,

telling her friend he wasn't as bad as the media suggested.

And not long afterwards, Samantha was to become very much

a part of the wider community around Sheikh al-Faisal.

Around this time, al-Faisal was constantly touring Britain,

and on a visit to the north the preacher met a 17-year-old

Jamaican from Huddersfield called Germaine Lindsay,

who'd go on to become Samantha's suicide bomber husband.

He was very quiet and soft spoken, he came across as an introvert.

He didn't speak much, but he came across as a fervent Muslim.

Like many young black males, they want a father figure.

He came across like that.

I wouldn't say I became his father figure.

I became someone that he took his Islamic knowledge from.

In the autumn of 2002, Samantha was given Germaine's e-mail address.

They met for the first time on a stop-the-war demo.

Today also saw a relatively new

and increasingly loud voice among protesters, that of British Muslims.

Since September 11th last year,

many young Muslims have become more politicised.

Meeting Germaine Lindsay, who went by the Muslim name Jamal,

was a pivotal moment.

A few weeks after starting London University,

18-year-old Samantha dropped out and married him almost immediately.

We didn't want an arranged marriage,

so I guess in a way we kind of arranged our own.

The Jamal I met and married was a man of peace.

We found we were very much alike and kindred spirits.

He wanted to qualify as a human rights lawyer

and I was a member of an Amnesty International group at school.

We wanted to make a difference to the world through peaceful means.

We were married in the front room in a simple

ceremony in front of an imam.

My father didn't approve, and stayed away.

He found it hard enough when I converted to Islam,

without marrying a Muslim I'd hardly met.

Over the next years, their marriage prospered.

In April 2004, 20-year-old Samantha gave birth to their first child,

and by the summer of 2005 she was heavily pregnant again.

On the morning of 7th July, 19-year-old Germaine Lindsay

arrived at Luton railway station at 5am.

He spent a few hours wandering around by himself.

Then he met three other men, including their leader,

Mohammad Sidique Khan, also a follower of Sheikh al-Faisal.

All four young men then took the train to London.

At 8.50am,

Germaine was standing in the front carriage of a Piccadilly Line

train as it left King's Cross.

He detonated his bomb.

We're still desperately waiting for emergency services, we've got

two major incidents.

Yeah, the emergency services have issued a system-wide code amber.

Germaine Lindsay killed himself and 26 others,

half of the total number of fatal victims, that day.

After the bombing, Samantha waited for six days at their home

before she told the police her husband was missing.

Simon Davis was a member of the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terror

Squad investigating the bombings.

Samantha Lewthwaite, her name did pop up very, very quickly.

Is she a sobbing, doting wife who didn't know what was occurring?

Or was she a bystander who chose not to get any further involved?

In the end, the authorities chose not to charge her.

Not everyone seemed to agree.

Two weeks after 7/7, two local lads fire-bombed her house.

A pregnant Samantha was given police protection for her own safety.

The wife of the London tube bomber Germaine Lindsay has been

speaking for the first time since the attacks.

She's condemned his actions

and said his mind had been poisoned by Muslim fanatics.

Jamal is accountable for his actions, 100%,

and I condemn with all my heart what he has done.

I will try for my children's sake to remember the Jamal I loved,

and I will raise them

knowing that their father was a man who truly loved them.

But the day will come when I have to tell them what he did.

I just hope people will understand I had nothing to do with this.

We are victims as well.

Samantha was paid for the interview, but was she telling the truth?

The 7/7 conspiracy was hatched in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire,

in the year before the bombing.

According to evidence from the 7/7 inquest,

she was a frequent visitor with her husband Germaine Lindsay

to the house of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the ringleader.

A neighbour remembers.

Mohammad Sidique Khan, he didn't talk to anybody.

He just kept a very, very secret life to himself.

People around here, 99% people go to the mosque.

This person, Mohammad Sidique Khan, he never went to the mosque.

On one occasion I remember the white woman, but I didn't really

recognise her because she had her veil on her face.

Actually, I used to see her come in from my top window once or twice.

In particular, Samantha and Germaine stayed in Khan's house

in December 2004 when he wasn't there.

He was preparing for 7/7,

being taught how to build bombs in al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan.

You look at the case of Germaine Lindsay and her, she must

have known a lot of what was going on and chose not to disclose it.

There's no doubt in my mind.

But these judgments are all in hindsight.

In 2006, aged 22, Samantha was a mother of two children.

She moved into this flat in Hilton Avenue, Aylesbury.

Shirley Anwar, now a fellow convert to Islam, was her neighbour.

We used to see each other in passing really when she used to come

out of her door to go downstairs and meet her mum.

Her mum used to come in the car and Samantha used to go in the car

with her children and then they'd come back together

and bring the shopping up the stairs, and, like I said,

the mother used to visit regularly, sort of on a daily basis, I'd say,

and she seemed to have a very close relationship with her mum.

And I think that Samantha did tell me

that her mum had just converted as well and wore a headscarf

all the time, very similar to the way Samantha used to dress as well.

I saw her dad on a couple of occasions. I think he was coming in

to do some work.

From what Shirley tells me,

there does seem to have been some reconciliation with her family.

They all took a big trip to Disneyland Paris,

but what was going on in Samantha's mind?

The situation is such that many times your own family,

mothers and fathers,

cannot even know you are a mujahid, a fighter.

It means you are a stranger amongst your own family and friends.

I never saw Samantha with anybody else.

I never saw lots of people visiting the house.

There were a couple of occasions where the newspapers would be

knocking on people's door. She just said to me,

"If you get anybody knock on the door just don't say anything."

At this point Samantha had a choice - life as a single parent

in a small town, or to build on her reputation as the wife of a martyr.

Losing her husband, I feel that she became a little bit of a figurehead.

In some circles, the credibility was raised,

her notoriety was raised.

Post-event, perhaps one year afterwards,

someone, whether it was the police or whoever, should have looked at her

and said, "Could this lead the catalyst to other events?"

In the two or three years after 7/7,

Samantha was moving in circles of fervent Muslims.

Kerry Bullivant knew some of her friends.

From some of the people that I know of that had discussions

with her, it would seem that she was looking for a husband

who was still looking to be involved in violent jihad.

In a way these guys are kind of like a rock star,

do you know what I mean? They're on the edges of society.

They're not willing to play by the rules.

Some people find that sort of bad boy

and on the edge of the law quite attractive. That, in their eyes,

are brave enough and strong enough to be willing to sacrifice everything.

So what happened next in Samantha Lewthwaite's life?

I think there's only one person who might have an insight -

the preacher who inspired her, Sheikh al-Faisal.

He'd been released from a UK prison in 2007

and immediately deported, having served four years

for inciting murder, for saying things like, "If you see a Hindu

"walking down the road, you're allowed to kill him."

I've tracked him down to the north coast of Jamaica

and the first thing he tells me is jaw-dropping.

The first time I met her was when she came to visit me in prison.

That was 2006.

That prison was Long Lartin in Worcestershire.

Sheikh al-Faisal has never told a journalist before

about his friendship with Samantha.

Surprisingly when she came to visit me,

she didn't seem like she was sad or she had the world on her shoulders.

It was a very pleasant, pleasant visit.

And why did that surprise you?

Because she lost her husband in the 7/7 bombing,

so I would think she would be sad

but when she came, she was jovial, she looked happy.

She didn't look sad,

and the persona that she came across is like,

it's business as usual for her. Life goes on.

While living under police protection in Aylesbury,

it appears that Samantha was discretely nurturing

her friendship with the jailed preacher.

We kept in touch by telephone on a regular basis when I was in prison.

Women are better on the phone than men.

Men, they are careless on the phone.

They say things that are incriminating,

while women don't say any incriminating things on the phone.

And when I was in prison, she looked after me to a certain extent.

She always asked, "Do you need anything?"

Because she's a very, very kind person.

Anything I need, for example, books or clothing or cash,

"You need anything, let me know, I'll send it."

So it turns out that an Islamist preacher jailed for inciting murder

was able to meet the wife of a suicide bomber

under the watchful eye of the security services,

yet seemingly they did nothing.

As I talk to Sheikh al-Faisal, it's clear that his years in prison

have done little to moderate his violent rhetoric.

There are many people who have to be killed in Islam.

You have to kill the apostates, you have to kill the homosexuals,

you have to kill the man who dabbles in black magic,

you have to kill the highway robber.

It's called a purge.

But what does Sheikh al-Faisal know about Samantha Lewthwaite

after 2008?

That year he tells me he was on a world tour starting in South Africa.

It was there that once again his intervention would have

a dramatic effect on the next step she would take.

I had a meeting with some South Africans.

It was about 20 people in the room

and one of the men expressed a desire to marry a British girl

and he expressed his preference for a white sister.

So somebody said, "You need to speak to Sheikh Faisal

"if you want to marry a white sister from the UK."

So I immediately thought of Samantha,

so I picked up my mobile and I rang her

and said, "I've found you a potential husband."

She didn't show any interest at first. She was shy.

-I know her taste.

-What is her taste?

Her taste is that she would like to marry a young man

who's of a different race, preferably black, from the black race,

who is very handsome and very strong in the Muslim faith.

That's her taste.

On the way to the airport,

Sheikh al-Faisal suddenly comes up with another surprise.

He says he knows someone who might be in contact with Samantha.

He offers to pass on an e-mail.

Sheikh al-Faisal wishes me luck for my search in South Africa.

He has fond memories of the warm embrace of his friends there.

After Sheikh al-Faisal introduced Samantha to her future husband

on the phone, she spent the next six weeks

back at the flat in Hilton Avenue, Aylesbury, talking to him.

Then she packed her bags and left England.

She seemed to have just disappeared.

I don't even...I'm not even aware whether the people, you know,

the housing association knew that she was leaving

because the people that moved in afterwards found

lots of mail still for her so she hadn't left a forwarding address.

I think there were some bills that hadn't been paid.

So I'm following Samantha's trail to South Africa.

Samantha arrived in Johannesburg in July 2008.

She came with her two children, then aged four and two.

When she came to Johannesburg, the Muslim community,

they received her with open arms

and she was given a red carpet treatment,

so she arrived one day and got married the following day.

When I spoke to my husband with the view of marriage, he told me

he had been injured and glory be to Allah,

he was concerned if this would affect my decision.

But once I learned his injuries were sustained in the cause of Allah,

it only made the decision easier.

So who was this new husband?

He's called Fahmi Salim.

I can reveal that he was born in Mombasa, Kenya, in 1985.

That's 16 months younger than Samantha.

And he was living in Johannesburg

and he was a close friend of the home I was in.

And he was treated like one of the family members because of his piety.

Sheikh al-Faisal tells me that the head of the family

that looked after Fahmi Salim was a man called Junaid Dockrat.

Maybe he'll be able to tell me more about him

and his romance with Samantha.

One of Junaid Dockrat's businesses is a shop called Sniper Africa.

It sells camouflage gear and hunting goods,

but Junaid Dockrat doesn't want to talk to me.

I'd also like to ask him about what the US government said in 2007,

that Junaid Dockrat is an al-Qaeda financier,

recruiter and facilitator.

And they also claim he raised 120,000 for al-Qaeda.

Previously he's strongly rejected these accusations

and completely denies any involvement.

The South African government seemed to support him

as they prevented his name being added

to a United Nations sanctions list.

Apart from the Sniper shop,

Junaid Dockrat's also a dentist with a practice just around the corner.

Over the last few days I've rung Junaid Dockrat, I've e-mailed him

and, rather surprisingly, I almost encountered him.

He's up there right now seeing his dental patients,

but, sadly, between me and him was a closed door

and he told his receptionist he absolutely didn't want to see me.

It's a shame he won't talk, but even then I doubt he'd have

any idea about what was going through Samantha's love-struck mind.

Allah blessed me with the best husband for me,

in fact exactly what I'd asked for when I made dua before marriage.

I asked for a man who would go forth, give all he could for

Allah's cause and spend a life terrorising the disbelievers

as they have us.

Samantha's new life in Johannesburg seems to have been the model

of middle class respectability.

With a different name, she rented a house in a family-friendly

garden suburb on the outskirts.

I only ever saw her drive up and down in the road in her car

with her children in the car with her,

and yeah, like any other resident, I'd wave hello and that was it.

My children have said they've taken sweets from her,

so I didn't think she was dangerous.

She was always dressed with her veil, hooded over, and that.

I suppose you could say conservative,

and she had a big old white Mercedes,

which you notice.

One thing I pick up from the neighbours and from Samantha's

application to find a rented property, is that her husband Fahmi

was often away on business, a very unconventional business, it seems.

My husband has left me

on many occasions to go out for Allah's cause.

The pain of missing your husband

and wishing to be in his presence is a test in itself.

Then there are times you do not receive news of him

for several weeks.

The not knowing whether he is alive or gained Shahada -

martyrdom - is enough to lose appetite and sleep.

During those times, I felt how can I eat when I don't know where he is?

How can I sleep when bombs are dropping on his head?

Despite the frequent absences, during the two years in

South Africa, Samantha's marriage to Fahmi Salim

seems to have flourished.

In July 2009, she had her third child, a son called Abdur-Rahman,

at Stoke Mandeville Hospital

while she was on a brief trip back to the UK.

And within a few months, she'd fallen pregnant again.

July 2010, she paid £380 in cash to an upmarket birthing centre,

the Genesis Clinic in Johannesburg,

for the water birth of her fourth child.

The midwife said she arrived here dressed in a niqab

with only her eyes showing.

This picture was taken shortly after the birth.

It seems that Samantha had got what she wanted,

a committed husband and a growing family.

But how did this young family support themselves

and pay for private health care and the white Mercedes?

I'm told that her husband, Fahmi Salim,

perhaps under an assumed name, used to run a small business.

I asked the caretaker if he knows Samantha's husband.

So this guy, do you recognise him?

-Yes.

-You're absolutely certain it was him?

Yes. I'm sure it's him.

And is this what his wife looked like?

Yeah, it's this one. She was always like that.

The business, what did they do here?

Yeah, like the injections.

-Needles?

-Needles, yeah. The drip things - everything, yeah.

They need a lot of bandages. Boxes.

Yeah.

It seems that they were a shipping company for medical supplies

and Samantha was given a job by another

member of Johannesburg's close-knit Muslim community.

She was the assistant manager of a Halal pie factory, charged

with organising the creation of sausage rolls and Cornish pasties.

Bank statements show she was earning about £1,200 a month.

Behind the veneer of respectability, however, there is

the first evidence of criminality.

Samantha had bought from a corrupt official this false ID card,

having stolen the identity from a real person,

a nurse called Natalie Faye Webb, and she used it to get credit cards.

It seems like she was a suburban housewife

with something of a shopping habit.

She eventually defrauded the banks

and clothes shops to the tune of about £5,000.

And then in January 2011, she procured this official passport,

again using her false name and identity.

She was preparing for the next step of her journey.

Having lived a comfortable lifestyle in the west,

when he told me that choosing to marry him might one day mean

living under a tree, not knowing the reality, I accepted.

I mean of course this path is all I have ever wanted

and until today, praise for Allah, I have not yet lived under a tree.

By late autumn 2011,

Samantha came back to the home town of her husband, Mombasa, Kenya.

Soon after she arrived, the police raided a house

and found a bomb factory which they claim was operated by five people.

Today, 23rd September 2013, their trial hearing is due to begin.

In the dock is this man, Jermaine Grant.

He's from Barking in east London.

It's alleged that he conspired with Samantha Lewthwaite

and she should be in the dock too.

From our case file, we think they were preparing some explosives

from the equipment and the chemicals found in their possession.

Lewthwaite's Kenyan charge sheet accuses her of conspiring

with others before the court to improvise an explosive device

with the intent to cause harm to innocent citizens.

The second charge is that she was also in possession

of explosive materials, the very same ones that Grant is being

tried for today and are being revealed in court.

At the raid on Grant's house in Mombasa,

they found hydrogen peroxide, battery acid and batteries,

some of the vital ingredients that made up the bombs of 7/7.

Where were they going to use it?

It is not known exactly where they were to use it because

they were in the process apparently of preparing something explosive.

The alleged Grant/Lewthwaite bomb-making conspiracy is just

the latest chapter in the history of Islamic extremism in Mombasa.

The 1998 bomb attacks on the US embassies in Kenya

and Tanzania, which killed at least 224 people

and injured thousands of others, were planned here.

Simon Davis, a former Metropolitan Police officer,

has investigated al-Qaeda bomb attacks in East Africa.

The 1998 bombing, I think, stood as a figurehead for them because

it was the first time there had been such a simultaneous success.

So they went big by doing the bomb, attacking diplomatic premises.

The guys that lived at the end of it could just merge

back into various communities where they were hailed as heroes.

I'm on my way to meet the ideological godfather

of today's Mombasa jihadis.

The UN claim that Sheikh Abubakar Sharif Ahmed,

known as Makuburi, is a leading facilitator and recruiter

of young Kenyan Muslims for violent militant activity.

Can he tell me if Samantha Lewthwaite was involved

in the Westgate attack?

Yes, there's not a shred of evidence produced to link her to those people.

We are just being given a name, Samantha, Samantha, Samantha.

OK, what did she do? What part did she play?

There's no evidence linking her to that place.

I mean, if it's true what they are saying, then she's a super lady.

I wish I knew where she was, I want to propose to her.

You'd like to marry her?

Obviously if she's not married.

If she can keep the intelligence

services of the world on their toes for so long, Allah!

May Allah protect her.

It's clear that Makuburi admires Samantha.

He shares the ideas that are found in her writings.

There's no innocent person in Britain or in America or in France.

You attack, you are the one who elects,

ones who elect your presidents and your presidents are the ones

who come and kill our children, and try to occupy our lands.

We will not tolerate that.

The following day there's dramatic news - Makuburi has been shot.

It's not exactly a surprise.

Over the last year, a number of leading Islamists have been

assassinated, most probably by the police, but as I enter his house,

I discover he's very much alive and giving a press conference.

I was ambushed today in the morning with this news that

I had been killed but these are just rumours.

I don't know who has started them.

I suspect the police of doing that because they want to kill me.

Are you afraid of your life?

I know my life is in danger but I am not afraid for it

because I know they cannot kill me except when the hour comes.

And when it comes, I cannot stop it.

The prophecy of his own death isn't misplaced.

Not long afterwards,

Makuburi is indeed shot dead on the street by unknown assassins.

Was Samantha Lewthwaite also part of this bloody ongoing war?

We can learn quite a bit about her life in Mombasa in 2011

from this confidential police document.

In the autumn of that year, she was living in this yellow house.

When the police raided, they found her English

birth certificate at the bottom of a red suitcase.

From the stuff left behind,

it doesn't look like she was spending her hours building bombs.

Her writings, the browsing history from her computer,

present an ordinary British woman who looked at a Beyonce website,

was concerned about weight loss and nurturing her marriage.

When a man comes home, wife beautiful, food prepared,

kids clean, this is like Halal magic.

She was even writing notes for a new fitness business for pregnant women.

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But at the same time as she was living in one house,

she seemed to be working from another.

Nelson Korea is the landlord of this second house.

Can he recognise the family from the picture of the birth

of their fourth baby?

The landlord says that the husband, Fahmi Salim,

was using an alias of a Mozambiquan called Marco,

and he thought the tenants were behaving in strange ways.

On 19th December 2011, the police raided this house.

Samantha and Fahmi were gone

but they found 98 rounds of ammunition. And there was more.

So this house seems to have been some kind of operational base.

Why else would the tenants dispose of simcards and mobile phones

unless they'd implicate them in a conspiracy?

And if that's what it was, Samantha is implicated.

The landlord says that it was she, the so-called Mrs Marc,

who intended to pay the rent.

It does seem that Samantha helped organise this house,

the alleged operational base for the conspiracy.

This is the closest I've got to suggesting that Samantha

played an active part in planning terrorism.

We ask that Allah keeps those fighting in his cause steadfast.

We ask that he protects them and their families.

We ask that Allah accepts the blood of those who die

to make there be no god but Allah.

20th December 2011.

Samantha Lewthwaite was in the poor neighbourhood of Kisuani,

in Mombasa, just around the corner from Jermaine Grant's

bomb factory that had been raided the day before.

The police were on her trail.

Intelligence led them to Samantha's mother-in-law's house.

At least a dozen officers surrounded it, securing the perimeter.

A senior officer entered the building

and found a woman who called herself Natalie Faye Webb.

She said she was a South African tourist and showed them

this passport.

In a bag she had two million Kenyan shillings, £13,500.

It isn't clear what happened next.

Perhaps the police were incompetent, perhaps they were bribed.

Perhaps even Samantha had some protector high up

within the government or the police,

but somehow Samantha persuaded the police to let her go.

The authorities have not seen her since.

When I began this investigation,

I wanted to find out how seriously we should take Samantha Lewthwaite.

Was she a fantasist or genuinely committed to jihad?

I found one last clue that seems to remove any doubt.

The last person that she was seen with was her sister-in-law,

Nassim Jamali Salim.

She was the wife of Musa Hussein,

who was killed in a shoot-out in Somalia in June 2011.

What's significant about that is that it connects Samantha

to the very heart of the aristocracy of al-Qaeda.

Musa Hussein was the lieutenant to, and died with, Harun Fazul

and he was the leader of the 1998 East African Embassy bombings,

a trusted confidante of Osama Bin Laden

and one of a handful of people privy to the planning of 9/11.

Given her connections, it seems that Samantha and her children

are probably living behind high walls and barbed wire

under the protection

of international sympathisers of al-Qaeda.

I am sure she's not in Europe. She's in Africa.

Which African country? Your guess is as good as mine.

She has the backing of the Muslim community because she's

loved by the people there and I don't think she should hand over

herself because she's not guilty of anything, and she'll never get

a fair trial because the media has already tried her and convicted her.

Almost certainly she didn't have anything to do

with the Westgate attack.

Her body has not been found.

She wasn't on the CCTV.

The Samantha that I knew was not a leader, she was a follower.

It would seem very unlikely that any of these groups

would have a female as a leader.

The concept of a leader of the jihad is always,

is a position given to the man.

But maybe she's been involved in other conspiracies.

I personally don't think her radicalisation is such that

she's running around herself planting bombs,

but she's obviously giving material and maternal support to people.

Whatever the truth, it seems that she doesn't want to tell it

and given that this might not end well, she may never get the chance.

Silence is salvation.

We pride ourselves on abstaining from alcohol, pig, extramarital sex.

That is good.

But when it comes to the tongue, the sins are let loose.

The good of a Muslim is to speak little

of that which does not concern us.

She who withholds her tongue, Allah will conceal her faults.