Kenya's request for Interpol to issue a "red flag" for the arrest of Samantha Lewthwaite comes nearly two years after the alleged plot she is accused of being involved in. The Kenyan charges relate not to this month's Westgate attack but to her alleged possession of explosives in December 2011 and an alleged plot at that time to bomb a number of tourist resorts on Kenya's coast. This was serious enough for the Foreign Office to upgrade its travel alert for Kenya, and for Scotland Yard detectives to fly out to Kenya to investigate. Ms Lewthwaite has been on the run for months and was reported to have crossed into Somalia last year. She is not wanted for any terrorism offences in Britain but now that Interpol have circulated the alert for her arrest to 190 member countries, it raises her case from the national to the international. There is still no evidence she had any involvement in the Nairobi attacks.
Kenyan investigators have been joined by experts from the US, UK, Germany, Canada and Interpol to comb the sprawling shopping complex for DNA, fingerprints and ballistic clues.Lewthwaite, the daughter of a British soldier, grew up in Banbridge, Northern Ireland, and later in Aylesbury, where she converted to Islam as a teenager. She was married to July 7 bomber Germaine Lindsay at the time of the attacks, but insisted in their aftermath that she was horrified by them. But she later disappeared with the couple's two children, only to re-emerge in Kenya as a committed Jihadi who is believed to be working with al-Shabaab. About 4,000 Kenyan troops have been serving in the south of Somalia since October 2011 as part of an African Union force supporting Somali government forces. The group is banned as a terrorist group by both the US and the UK and is believed to have between 7,000 and 9,000 fighters.