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Samantha Lewthwaite teamed up with the terror group earlier this year.

That's the verdict of intelligence experts who believe the former soldier's daughter joined Islamic State (IS) earlier this year and has become one of the most powerful women in the network.

She is thought to be responsible for the training a special team of female suicide bombers who will be used to target the group's enemies.

Lewthwaite, 30, is so highly regarded in the group that she is known as the "Special One" or the "Important Woman", according to intelligence sources.

It is also understood that Lewthwaite is responsible for the training and mentoring British and other white converts to Islam who have volunteered to fight for IS.

One source said: "We have some very interesting signals intelligence which refers to a white British woman who holds a senior position in IS.

"There has been mention of a woman joining IS after being married to Ja ihadi fighter who became a martyr and there have been references to attacks in Africa.

"That narrows down the list of suspects. Other agencies have some human intelligence which also supports the theory that she is now in Syria."

Lewthwaite was married to Germaine Lindsay, one of four Islamist suicide bombers who attacked the London transport network on 7 July 2005, killing 52 people.

She was once regarded as an innocent Home Counties wife who was married to a crazed suicide bomber.

But now she is regarded as the world's most dangerous female terrorist and is wanted dead or alive in several countries.

The source added: "Her most powerful weapon is her use of propaganda – she may well be orchestrating the videos we have been seeing emerge from IS in the last few weeks.

"IS have plenty of fighters but they lack someone who really understands how to exploit the western media and this is where her strength is. She is a female version of Joseph Goebbels. She is more use to them than a 100 volunteers and that is why she is so highly regarded within the organisation."

The 30-year-old Muslim convert has been linked to Somalia's al-Shabaab rebels, who have launched a string of attacks in Kenya, including the assault on Nairobi's Westgate shopping centre that claimed at least 67 last September.

At the time of the attack witnesses reported seeing a "pale-skinned" woman inside the shopping mall directing attackers and firing at victims.

There has been no confirmed sighting of Lewthwaite since she gave Kenyan police the slip in Mombasa in 2011, reportedly using a false South African passport.

She is wanted in Kenya on charges of being in possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit a felony dating back to December 2011, and is the subject of an Interpol red notice warrant for her detention issued at Kenya's request.

Experts have said that she had links with al-Qaida and other Islamist terror groups.

In June 2012 two men and a white woman in Islamic dress, believed to be Lewthwaite, threw grenades at foreigners watching England play Italy in Euro 2012 at a beer garden in the coastal city of Mombasa.

Three died, including a boy of nine, and 25 were injured. Lewthwaite was linked to another grenade attack which killed security guards in an upmarket restaurant.

She is also thought to have been behind an attempt to free alleged bomb maker Jermaine Grant, 29, from East London, and to have plotted to slaughter tourists at plush hotels.

She celebrated when her hated terror rival Omar Hammani was gunned down in Somalia earlier this month — along with her second husband Habib Ghani — after daring to criticise al-Shabaab's leader Sheikh Godane.