"For him to imagine his own daughter is involved in this is very painful. He served his country; his daughter is apparently tarnishing both his reputation and his country’s reputation.” While the family have refused to speak out, neighbours recall the White Widow as a different person. The frightening thing is she was perfectly normal.” He went on: “How does a housewife and mother suddenly become the mastermind of an attack in East Africa? “Even after 7/7 they were still together under police protection, her and her parents. They are astonished as I am.” Yesterday, the strain on the family became clear when Lewthwaite’s ­grandmother Elizabeth Allen, of Banbridge, Co Down, was admitted to hospital because of heart problems.Businessman Niknam Hussein, 50, met Lewthwaite when she was a ­teenager. Joan Baird, a councillor in Banbridge, who knows the family, said: “Mrs Allen, at 85, is too ill to cope with all this."Her health is poor and continuing to fail as a result of the pressure and all the news reports about her granddaughter.” Lewthwaite’s transformation into one of terror group al-Shabaab’s figureheads on the run in East Africa is something few can comprehend.

"She was very innocent, lacking ­confidence, shy and very easy to get on with. “That’s why I find it absolutely amazing that she is supposed to be the head of an international criminal terrorist organisation.” As a teenager at Aylesbury’s Grange School, Lewthwaite became friendly with a local Muslim family who helped her to convert to Islam.

Her interest in religion developed when she enrolled on a degree course in politics and the study of religions in 2002 at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. She met Jamaican-born Muslim convert Lindsay through an Islamic internet chatroom the same year and they married a few months later.

They lived in Lindsay’s home town of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, but moved back to Aylesbury in September 2003.

As a soldier who served in Northern Ireland during the 1970s at the height of the Troubles, Andy Lewthwaite understands the dreadful toll of terror attacks.

But today he is carrying the burden of being the father of the world’s most reviled international terrorist.

His daughter Samantha – dubbed the White Widow – is believed to have played a key role in planning the ­Westgate mall massacre in Nairobi.And she could even have died in a firefight with Kenyan soldiers.Last night experts were still trying to determine if a white woman’s body found among militants was the 29-year-old.For years her family, of Aylesbury, Bucks, have struggled to deal with the mum-of-three’s disappearance after husband Germaine Lindsay killed 26 people in the 7/7 London bombings.Now builder Andy, 57, who has two other children with Lewthwaite’s mum Christine Allen, has to come to terms with how his happy little girl became apparently capable of slaughtering children.One neighbour said: “Andy is aware of how appalling indiscriminate shootings are.

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