White Widow 'is alive and living with jihadist al-Qaeda husband in Somalia', Kenyan spies say 

  • Samantha Lewthwaite shares home with a jihadi nicknamed 'Marco Costa'
  • Kenyan intelligence officials say husband shot two cops in Nairobi in 2011
  • They say 'She is in a stable marriage with two children.. she is alive'
  • Russia claimed White Widow had been killed by sniper in Ukraine 

White widow Samantha Lewthwaite is 'alive and well' and living in southern Somalia with her jihadist husband, a wanted al-Qaeda suspect who calls himself Marco Costa, Kenyan sources said today.

In a forged Mozambican passport obtained by MailOnline his picture clearly identifies him as Fahmi Jamal Salim who has been on the run from Kenyan police since he shot and killed two police officers in Nairobi in 2011.

Lewthwaite and Salim also appear in a 'selfie' taken at their home. Police are using these and pictures of their two children in a countrywide manhunt for the couple.

Counter-terrorism sources in Kenya revealed their updated profile of Lewthwaite in response to claims from a Moscow news agency earlier this week that she had been killed by sniper fire while fighting with a Ukrainian volunteer battalion against pro-Russian rebels.

Kenyan intelligence authorities are demanding to see Lewthwaite's body and say they refuse to believe she has been part of any militia outside East Africa.

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In love: Lewthwaite and Fahmi Jamal Salim appear in a 'selfie' taken at their home in Somalia

In love: Lewthwaite and Fahmi Jamal Salim appear in a 'selfie' taken at their home in Somalia

Major threat: Lewthwaite, left, and her new husband Salim are major operatives in al-Shabaab

A senior source said: 'We believe we currently have an accurate profile of Lewthwaite's life and location. She has been linked to other jihad suspects in the past but we now know that she is in a stable marriage with Salim and has two young children with him.

'They pose a major threat to security, working at a high level in the al-Shabaab terror group and planning bombing raids in Somalia and Kenya in retaliation for Kenya sending troops to Somalia to defeat al-Shabaab.'

By marrying Salim Samantha Lewthwaite has joined a family steeped in Muslim extremism and the jihad.

Salim's brother-in-law was notorious al-Qaeda recruiting officer Musa Dheere , shot dead at a roadblock in Mogadishu in 2011 alongside Fazul Mohamed, a terror suspect with a $5m (£3.1m) bounty on his head. Dheere was wanted for the bombing of American embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in 1998 when several hundred were killed.

A comprehensive file seen by MailOnine reveals that Lewthwaite, 30, married Salim in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2008 after meeting him through a Muslim hate cleric she regularly visited in Long Lartin Prison, Worcestershire, following the death of her first husband Germaine Lindsay.

Lindsay was part of a suicide bomb plot which killed 52 people on the London underground in July, 2005.

Lewthwaite, pregnant with his second child, told police at the time that she was 'horrified' to hear of her husband's activities, but was soon visiting the cleric Abdullah al-Faisal in prison where he was held for four years.

Al-Faisal has admitted that Lewthwaite asked him to find 'a young handsome devout Muslim ' to marry.

Growing up in jihad: Samantha Lewthwaite is believed to have two children with her husband Fahmi Jamal Salim

On the run: Lewthwaite, pictured right on a false passport, has written of being a good mother and wife in a file seen by Kenyan police 

She disappeared from British police radar and was next seen in December 2011 in the small town of Bakarani on Kenya's east coast where police had swooped on a slum area to arrest suspected terrorists.

As police sent her DNA and fingerprints to Scotland Yard overnight, Lewthwaite fled. It was discovered later that when police confronted her she was staying at her in-laws' house. Salim's widowed sister Naseem and their mother lived there.

It now emerges that Lewthwaite had met and married Salim, through the cleric al- Faisal, in Johannesburg in 2008. They had false South African identities and both worked in the city while planning their jihadist activities.

Salim ran a medical supplies business while Lewthwaite was an accountant for a Halal pie-making factory.

They are living within the protection of an extremely dangerous al-Shabaab community and all we can do is wait for them to make a fatal mistake

She gave birth to two children in a Johannesburg clinic, completing their family of four, including Lindsay's son and daughter.

They are now believed to be living in the Lower Shebelle area of southern Somalia, an al-Shabaab stronghold , travelling by dhow – an Arab fishing boat – to reach their counterpart jihadists in Mombasa – or crossing the porous Kenyan border by vehicle at Kiungi town.

Lewthwaite home-schools her four children and has written in her diaries of her hope they will become jihadists. The secretive local al-Shabaab community takes care of the children while their parents are away on visits to networks in Kenya.

Lewthwaite is considered an important banker/logistician for al-Shabaab. Until recently she was a devoted follower of Ahmed Abdi Godane, the al-Shabaab founder and spiritual leader who announced alliance to al-Qaeda in June 2011.

There had been a $7m ( £4.2m) reward for information leading to his arrest. Lewthwaite and her husband were part of his six-member terror cell.

Godane was the mastermind behind the shocking armed raid on Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall in October 2013, describing his militia's 67 murders there as 'an epic battle written in blood by my fighters to change the course of history'.

Lewthwaite later openly tweeted her support and admiration for Godane. He was killed two months ago in an American air strike on a convoy in southern Somalia, and counter-terrorism police now fear that Lewthwaite and her cohorts could be planning revenge strikes.

A source told MailOnline: 'We have been tracking Lewthwaite and Salim for four years now and we know a great deal about them. But they are living within the protection of an extremely dangerous al-Shabaab community and all we can do is wait for them to make a fatal mistake.

'If we are able to arrest them we will be proud to produce a show trial exposing their trail of murder and destruction throughout Kenya and Somalia'. 

 

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