Samantha Lewthwaite alias Natalie Faye Webb. Photo | FILE
By FRED MUKINDA
When police declared that British woman Samantha Lewthwaite was terrorism fugitive, she lived comfortably in Nairobi’s Lavington neighbourhood.
She stayed with four children and a man who the locals knew as Nick, but who has been identified as Habib Ghani, a high-ranking Al-Shabaab fighter.
Caretakers at Oakpark Apartments say Samantha lived in a three bedroom house on the third floor, about 500 metres from The Junction shopping mall off Ngong Road. Many times, she took her four children to the mall for shopping.
She would call a taxi to get her there, and at other times walked to the mall wheeling the youngest child, with the other three in tow.
Ghani and Samantha always used one taxi, which was usually driven by a woman who has never been seen there since they left.
No smiles
A housekeeper, Teresia Nyambura, described her as one with a stern look, no smiles and few words. In one of the few conversations they had, the maid asked her children’s names.
“I like to give my children names from the Bible. That one is Adam, the girl is Sarah, the other one is Harun and the little one is Chuchu,” Nyambura quotes Samantha to have said. And then she would dismiss her: “I don’t like someone getting too much interested in me.”
Ms Nyambura only talked to her when she was at the swimming pool in the compound; she rarely allowed anyone into her house.
Mr Alfred Osiolo, a caretaker, said Samantha moved into the house from another apartment about two kilometres away. “She came in a taxi together with Nick and asked for a house. She asked me to get a truck that could transport their furniture. I even helped them load and transport it from the other apartment.
Her house was always locked and she spent most of the time in the bedroom, working on a computer, according to Ms Nyambura.
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