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Hilary Clinton

JOHANNESBURG – Four years ago then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pointed out that suicide bombers were being recruited in South Africa for terrorist group al-Shabab.

By then Samantha Lewthwaite had been living in South Africa for a year already.

Lewthwaite is the suspected mastermind of the bloody attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi.

At the request of Kenyan authorities, Interpol – which has labelled her a “danger” to the world – yesterday issued a warrant for Lewthwaite’s arrest.

Minister of Home Affairs Naledi Pandor did not say yesterday which name was used when Lewthwaite entered South Africa, but confirmed she had used false pretences to obtain a passport under the name Natalie Faye Webb.

Lewthwaite is said to have claimed that her parents were South Africans who had moved to the UK. She applied for South African passports for herself and her children using late registration of birth documents.

“Our records show this woman applied for her passport and the passports of her children in Durban after she entered the country in July 2008,” said Pandor.

Lewthwaite used the documents to travel to and out of South Africa multiple times before she left for good in 2011.

Pandor, who called for further investigations into Lewthwaite’s Webb passport, said that when the passport was flagged as belonging to a “terrorist suspect” in 2011, the Home Affairs Department had launched an investigation in conjunction with the UK and Kenyan authorities.

In August 2009, when Clinton met Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, she said: “The minister and I are well aware that al-Shabab is recruiting young Somalis from South Africa, Australia and the US to become suicide bombers, to participate in their efforts to turn Somalia into a safe haven for terrorism .”

Brian Dube, spokesman for the State Security Agency, said Clinton’s comments expressed the continuing “concern of world leaders”.

The security agency is collaborating with global partners by sharing information about terrorism threats. Dube said he could not detail the nature of continuing investigations.

But Anneli Botha, senior terrorism researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, said local authorities did not recognise the seriousness of “Islamic extremism as a credible threat” and were not ploughing enough resources into probing it.

“People would say, why target us? We are not Somalia, we are not pro-America and we are not involved in the war against terrorism and we don’t have enemies.

“But in the mind of extremists, in the mind of al-Qaeda, this does not count at all,” said Botha.

“This is putting us at risk, first as a safe haven [for terrorists] and secondly as a target.”

Botha said she had interviewed a member of al-Shabab who had acquired a South African passport and received “ideological training” in Johannesburg.

Jackson McKay, the immigration deputy director-general at Home Affairs, said Lewthwaite’s passport under the name Webb had been returned to South African authorities after it was found in Kenya in mid-2011.

“She only used it to travel to Kenya. She entered that country on this passport, but it was recovered and given back to us. Along with her passport being flagged, the passports of Lewthwaite’s children were flagged.” – The Times/The Daily Telegraph