Samantha Lewthwaite, a white 29 year old English woman, is now Interpol's most wanted female terrorist. It's alleged that she is the spokeswoman for Al Shabaab, the group behind the Nairobi massacre. So how did it come to this? There are 2.7 million Muslims in Britain and 78,000 of those are converts. Samantha Lewthwaite is one of them.
She grew up in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, an English town with a small Muslim community. She was a bright student and teachers loved her and when she was 17, she converted to Islam.
Against her family's wishes, she married one of the London bombers, Jermaine Lindsay, who blew himself up on the London tube along with 26 passengers in 2005. Her husband and his mother, a West Indian, converted to Islam together when he was 15 and they met on a Muslim chatroom.
Her family moved from Northern Ireland to Buckinghamshire in the early 90s. Her mother is an Irish Catholic and her father was a soldier who served in Northern Ireland in the 70s. When she was 17, her parents split up.
Terror experts believe Lewthwaite is a member of the Somali terror group Al-Shabaab and was involved in the Nairobe massacre, but they can't prove it. And even though Interpol has issued a Red Notice for her arrest and put 190 countries on alert, the warrant is carefully worded. It reads she is "wanted by Kenya on charges of being in possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit a felony in December 2011."
