Lewthwaite had met Lindsay in an Internet chat forum when she was 17, having converted to Islam two years earlier.
Described as a bubbly teenager, schoolfriends said she had an ordinary upbringing, first in Northern Ireland and then in the market town of Aylesbury, northwest of London.
Britain’s press has been fascinated by Lewthwaite’s story, and The Sun on Friday ran the headline “Angel-faced British girl who last night became World’s Most Wanted” across its front-page.
The paper also reported that she was being probed by the FBI.
Investigations have begun to lift the veil on Lewthwaite’s shadowy movements since the London bombings.
South Africa said on Thursday that Lewthwaite had gained a South African passport using the assumed identity Natalie Faye Webb and that the document was cancelled in 2011.
She had first entered the country in 2008. She was accompanied by her three children, a girl and two boys, who would now be roughly aged between seven and 12.
Media reports this week cited credit records as showing that “Natalie Faye Webb” had at least three addresses in Johannesburg and ran up debts of $8,600 (6,400 euros).
Two neighbours in the leafy Johannesburg suburb of Bromhof told AFP they recognised Lewthwaite’s picture.
Herbie Ullbricht, 69, who lived two houses away from her address cited in credit reports, said the woman lived there in “2010 or 2011” with her three children, and she was always dressed from head to toe in a hijab.
‘Semi-mythical status’
Earlier this month Kenyan authorities accused her of working with another suspected British Islamist, Jermaine Grant, who is on trial in Kenya accused of links to Al-Shabaab and of plotting attacks.
Grant was arrested in December 2011 in the port city of Mombasa with various chemicals, batteries and switches, which prosecutors say he planned to use to make explosives.
It is believed Lewthwaite was involved in the alleged plan to bomb a number of tourist resorts on Kenya’s coast and has been on the run for months, with reported sightings of her in Somalia.
Raffaello Pantucci, a terror expert at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, said Lewthwaite had acquired a “semi-mythical status”.
“I don’t think we’ve had any concrete evidence of her being involved in this incident,” he said. “But the fact of her being mentioned in this context is not surprising because of her connections.”
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