If White Widow Samantha Lewthwaite is on the run she will be hard to catch. If  Lewthwaite were to be on the run in Kenya, Nigeria or Somalia, it would be a easier to evade detection than in Europe. She would be wearing a veil, and sensitivities about searching Muslim women would be observed so she could easily slip through difficult checkpoints.

In Nigeria, where police forces are notoriously corrupt, there were reports she was almost caught a while ago, but she bribed her way out of trouble. Extremist communities such as al-Shabaab are tight-knit in these countries, making it difficult to recruit agents to penetrate them and trace her.