‘White Widow’ sighting in Poland ‘false’ say police
PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle
05.06.2014 12:13
Polish intelligence and police officers were on high alert before the visit of Barack Obama to Warsaw this week after a British tip off that Samantha Lewthwaite, known as the jihadist ‘White Widow’ had been spotted in Poland.
photo - Interpol
A British intelligence officer purportedly told Poland’s Counterterrorism Centre (ABW) that a woman wearing a characteristic white head scarf and resembling British terror suspect Samantha Lewthwaite was seen at Warsaw’s international airport on Tuesday.
The 31 year-old Lewthwaite’s late husband was one of the four bombers who died carrying out the 7 July 2005 bombings in London in which 52 people were killed and hundreds more injured.
Interpol is currently searching for the woman, a British convert to Islam who has been connected to terrorist attacks in Kenya.
The tip off that Samantha Lewthwaite was in Poland turned out to be false after Polish intelligence officers tracked down the woman wearing a scarf at Warsaw airport to a house in Zamosc, south east Poland.
The woman is actually a Pole working in the UK who had gone home to Zamosc to spend time with her family.
“We had to deal with a serious signal of a possible terrorist threat. We could not ignore it,” Polish police chief spokesman Mariusz Sokolowski told TVN24.
Lewthwaite is an alleged member of the Somalia-based radical Islamic militant group Al-Shabaab and in other ‘sightings’ of the terror suspect this week, she was reportedly seen being given a police escort to a Kenyan military base in Somalia before disappearing. (pg)