Documents leaked from Kenya’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) say Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir was the “high value target” who the US Navy SEALS were aiming to target in Somalia. It is alleged that he was behind the bomb plot in Kenya which involved Samantha Lewthwaite, the County Down-born “White Widow.”

The "white widow"  grew up in the North, daughter of a British soldier and a local woman before moving to England

The leaked report states that Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir, known as Ikrima, a known operator for the Somali militant group al-Shabaab, worked with Lewthwaite and Jermaine Grant, from Britain, to plan various terror attacks. Grant is currently on trial in Kenya.

It is alleged that the group planned “multiple attacks” as part of a mission “sanctioned by the al-Qaeda core in Pakistan,” including the recent attack and siege of the Westgate shopping mall, in Nairobi which killed 69 people and injured hundreds of others.

Ikrima has been named as al-Qaeda’s chief in East Africa who was responsible for planning attacks on a UN compound in Mogadishu and the airport in the city. He was the target of the US Navy SEAL’s predawn amphibious assault on Saturday. They raided his villa in the Somali town of Barawe but he was not in the house.

According to the leaked reports, seen by the Daily Telegraph, Lewthwaite was involved in the foiled plan to attack Kenya’s parliament, an Ethiopian restaurant in Nairobi and the United Nations headquarters in the city of Nairobi.

She has been on the run since December 2011 when police failed to capture her at the house of a known al-Qaeda operative in Mombasa on Kenya’s coast. She has been arrested for possessing bomb-making materials and for planning to cause explosions.

According to the NIS report Ikrima coordinated and “envisaged multiple attacks” in December 2011 and January 2012.

The report states, “By December 2011, the planners had acquired safe houses in Nairobi and Mombasa, trained the executors, received explosives from Somalia and commenced assembly of and concealment of explosives.”

Ikrima planned to direct another attack in April on an airfield in northeastern Kenya but failed. Grant, from east London, is charged with the same crimes as Lewthwaite. His trial in Mombasa continues in December.

Lewthwaite converted to Islam at the age of 17 and changed her name to Sherafiyah. She married Lindsay who was responsible for detonating the bomb at King's Cross Tube station, killing 26 people in July 2005.

Having been questioned in relation to the London attacks she disappeared with her three children and resurfaced two years later travelling to Kenya under a false passport.

Her third child was fathered by Habib Ghani, of Hounslow, West London, in 2009. Ghani was shot in Somalia two weeks ago in what is believed to have been a row between Al-Shabaab factions. It is believed that her grief could have spurred on her actions.

The failed raid of Ikrima’s home by US forces came at the same time American forces captured al Qaeda leader Anas al Liby in Libya. Al Liby was wanted in connection with the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people.