British officials are looking into reports that one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists, the so-called “White Widow”, has been killed by a Russian sniper in the violence in eastern Ukraine.  A major caveat is that the report comes from a Russian news agency, which doesn’t explain how a terrorist associated with Islamist causes got involved in Ukraine.

“One of the world's most wanted terrorists Samantha Lewthwaite who fought as part of a Ukrainian battalion has been killed by a volunteer sniper,” said Russia’s Regnum news agency. 

The Aidar battalion is currently fighting against Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.  Observers with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) accuse Aidar of kidnapping civilians.  And Amnesty International says Aidar had committed war crimes including:  Abductions and unlawful detention; theft and extortion; and possible executions.

30-year old Samantha Lewthwaite is the subject of an Interpol “Red Notice” arrest warrant issued after the massacre at the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya in September 2013.  Although reports have associated her with the attack, the al-Shabaab terrorist group has denied her involvement.  Kenyan authorities have been looking for her since 2012 in connection with bomb-making operations and a deadly attack in Mombasa.

Born in County Down, Northern Ireland in 1983 and raised in Buckinghamshire, Lewthwaite had converted to Islam by the age of 17.  She married Jamaican Muslim convert Germaine Lindsay, who would go on to be one of the London Tube suicide bombers in the 7 July 2005 attacks that killed more than 50 people and injured more than 700. 

She then sold her story to the British tabloid The Sun, and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation paid the budding young terrorist some 30,000 Pounds.

Samantha Lewthwaite went underground in 2009, left the UK and reportedly traveled around eastern Africa on forged documents, allegedly taking part in terrorist operations.  More recent reports link her to the training of British converts who go to Syria to fight for Islamic State.