An ex-terror cop has revealed he begged his bosses to arrest White Widow Samantha Lewthwaite before she set off on a global killing spree.
Former Scotland Yard detective David Videcette says Lewthwaite, 36, fooled police chiefs by protesting her innocence just days after her husband took part in the London 7/7 Tube bombings.
And Mr Videcette revealed his guilt at allowing the world’s most wanted female terrorist to walk free to plot atrocities across the globe.
He said: “She beat us. We couldn’t prosecute her, we tried and we failed.”
Lewthwaite – the daughter of a former British Army soldier who battled IRA terrorists – converted to Islam when she was 17.
She was radicalised after meeting extremist Germaine Lindsay, 19, and the couple married in 2002.
Lindsay was one of four suicide bombers who detonated devices on three London Underground trains and a bus on July 7, 2005, killing 56 people and injuring 700.
Lewthwaite, a pregnant mum-of-one at the time, said afterwards: “I totally condemn and am horrified by the atrocities.
“I am the wife of Germaine Lindsay, and never predicted or imagined that he was involved in such horrific activities.
“He was a loving husband and father. I am trying to come to terms with the recent events.
“My whole world has fallen apart, and my thoughts are with the families of the victims of this incomprehensible devastation.”
But her statement was soon exposed as a complete lie.
She adopted a fake identity to travel to Africa where she joined the al-Shabaab terror group.
Lewthwaite was named as a suspect in a grenade attack against tourists watching the Euros in 2012 at the Jericho bar in Kenya’s port city of Mombasa. Three people were killed and 25 injured.
The following year Interpol issued a Red Notice arrest warrant for her after she was linked to the 2013 Westgate Mall massacre in Nairobi.
The attack left five Britons and 66 other people dead and around 200 injured. Talking on the World’s Most Wanted documentary on Netflix, Mr Videcette said: “I really pressed hard to have her arrested in London. I really wanted her on a suspect list.
“Sadly the senior investigating officer felt that there wasn’t enough evidence to proceed and the Crown Prosecution Service was going to say no.
“I massively regret that she gets this opportunity to kill other people.
“Of course I think about it every single day and when you look at what happened in Mombasa she beat us.
“We couldn’t prosecute her, we tried and we failed.”
He added: “Samantha Lewthwaite played dumb, if you like. She played, ‘I’m just the wife, there was nothing untoward about our relationship.’
“But quickly we could get a bit of an idea that some of the stories people like Lewthwaite were telling us probably weren’t true.
“The family of Hasib Hussain, who was one of the other bombers, are on the phone straight away – ‘Hasib is on a day trip to London today and we are worried about him.’
“But Samantha Lewthwaite, ‘No I’m not bothered, seven days later I will ring the police.’ Why is she not thinking, ‘My God, where is my husband? I’m seven months pregnant yet my husband hasn’t come home.’
“She named her baby that was born after the bombing Shahid.
“Shahid is an honorific term for a martyr. She has called her child martyr effectively and she is supposed to be disgusted about what her husband has done.”
Kenyan police believe Lewthwaite entered the country in November 2011 using a fake passport.
She is thought to have slipped into the East African country under the name Natalie Webb before joining a terror cell in Mombasa.
She was placed under surveillance after moving into an apartment belonging to the former wife of terrorist financier Musa Hussein Abdi.
Kenyan cops say a laptop owned by Lewthwaite was used to search for bomb-making tips.
Poems allegedly written by the White Widow paying tribute to al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden were also found on the computer.
Security chiefs believe her other atrocity plots include the slaughter of 148 people by al-Shabaab gunmen at a Kenyan university in 2015.
Lewthwaite’s location remains unknown and it is believed she may be hiding in Kenya or Somalia, probably supported by an al-Shabaab network.
The former head of Somali’s National Intelligence and Security Agency has revealed his organisation tracked her down but couldn’t arrest her because it was too dangerous.
Ali Sanbalolshe says his spies found Lewthwaite in the Somali city of Jilib. He said: “We have been monitoring her movement and her presence sometimes at the border between Somalia and Kenya.
“Actually there was a time we were almost closing down on her.
“She was in Jilib. But it’s not easy to arrest her because she’s in al-Shabaab controlled territory.
“We don’t have those operational capabilities. She’s out of reach basically.” Lewthwaite, who lived in Aylesbury, Bucks, with her bomber husband, is wanted by MI5, MI6 and the CIA as well as Interpol after allegedly ordering around 400 deaths in atrocities in Kenya and Somalia.
Mr Sanbalolshe said: “Of course it is very important to arrest somebody like Samantha.
“To extract information from her is also important and she’s also dangerous. We are removing a threat.”
But he added: “We were not able to use drones against her because she is a British citizen and it is not legally allowed by UK law to do this kind of assassination.
“With British law the focus is to get the person, not to kill the person.”
Two years ago an MI6 officer in Nairobi who recruited a source with close links to Lewthwaite was given evidence that she was in civil war-torn Yemen, where she was being protected by a network of al-Shabaab fighters.
Lewthwaite is believed to have had plastic surgery and piled on weight to alter her appearance.
She has pledged to raise all of her four children, who have three different fathers, as fanatical jihadis.
It has been claimed she pumped boy suicide bombers as young as 15 with heroin before sending them to their deaths.
And Lewthwaite allegedly recruited Yemeni female suicide bombers with bribes of £300 – a fortune to desperate families.
Former United Nations investigator Matthew Bryden told the Netflix documentary: “Knowing where she is doesn’t mean that she can be reached by law enforcement or intelligence agencies without also taking real risks or causing a lot of civilian casualties.
“So monitoring her may be the best the intelligence community could do.”
