Abaaoud has been fighting in Syria for several years and even recruited his own 13-year-old brother Younes, right, who was believed to be ISIS' youngest fanatic
The mastermind behind the Paris terror attacks was today named as one of ISIS' top executioners who even recruited his 13-year-old brother to fight with him in Syria.
Belgian extremist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, is one of the world's most wanted war criminals and is believed to have persuaded thousands of young jihadis to come to Syria, including his teenage brother Younes, ISIS' youngest fanatic.
Abaaoud, who has regularly posed with bodies he decapitated and was seen in Greece in January but evaded arrest, was also linked to the thwarted high speed train attack earlier this year and church attacks around Paris.
He is from the Brussels district of Molenbeek, known as the 'jihadi capital of Europe', where the eight-strong killer squad who murdered 129 people in Paris on Friday are believed to have collected automatic weapons and suicide vests before driving into France in rented cars.
French police have said Abaaoud planned the attack from his base in Syria with help in Belgium and France. A recent video showed him grinning as he drove a lorry full of people ISIS executed before dumping them to a mass grave.
Meanwhile Belgian police have launched a major anti-terror raid in Molenbeek this morning in an effort to capture Salah Abdeslam with some sources saying he has been arrested after being flushed out of a flat with tear gas after an armed- stand-off.
Three days after the France's '9/11' police and security services were accused last night of a string of appalling blunders over the Paris massacres.
It emerged that:
Police stopped one of the gunmen hours after the bloodbath but let him go. He is now the world's most wanted man;
One suspected suicide bomber came to France from Greece where he had arrived on a raft with 198 Syrian refugees;
Authorities on the Greek island of Leros admitted that every refugee is given onward travel documents;
Omar Ismaël Mostefai , 29, one of the Bataclan suicide bombers, was spotted in Turkey where officials contacted French counterparts twice to say he was probably a terror threat in December 2014 and in June 2015. There was no response until French police asked for more information after Friday's attacks;
German police failed to tell their French counterparts they had seized a Paris-bound car laden with weapons;
Bataclan suspect named as Sami Aminour - who is believed to have been known to French police since 2012 after he tried to flee for Yemen;
Iraqi spies warned Western powers of an planned attack using teams of suicide bombers on the day before the Paris massacre;
In August French police arrested a 30-year-old man after he returned from Syria and he told them ISIS wanted to attack a concert venue like the Bataclan
The man let go by police, Salah Abdeslam, is one of three Belgian-based brothers all thought to be part of the Islamic State terror gang. An international arrest warrant is in place and the public have been urged not to approach him.
French police have also launched a series of coordinated anti-terrorism raids across the country this morning and have arrested dozens of people following the deadly attacks in Paris on Friday. Heavily armed tactical units launched dozens of raids in Toulouse, Grenoble, Calais and two Paris suburbs.
The French interior ministry confirmed that anti-terror police conducted 168 raids across the country overnight.
They have arrested dozens of suspects and seizing a cache of weapons including a rocket launcher.
Despite the movement on the ground today incredibly, French officials revealed that police had questioned him, checked his ID and then released him hours after the attacks.
The questioning came when police pulled over a Volkswagen Golf car containing three people in Cambrai near the French-Belgian border at 9am on Saturday.
This was hours after authorities had identified Salah Abdeslam as the person who had rented another Volkswagen – a Polo – that was abandoned outside the Bataclan concert hall.
But the occupants of the Golf were allowed to drive on as officials found nothing suspicious, it is understood. Police in Paris first linked the attacks to Belgium when they found a number of parking tickets from the Brussels suburb of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek in a VW Polo with Belgian number plates found outside the Bataclan.
Another car – also with Belgian plates – was found abandoned, packed with Kalashnikov assault rifles in the eastern Paris suburb of Montreuil yesterday, leading to speculation that some of the attackers have escaped. It was used in two of the drive-by shootings at restaurants.
Another of the Belgian bombers, Bilal Hadfi, who is from Neder-over-Heembeek, travelled to Syria earlier this year, after being radicalised by a Belgian imam, according to Het Laatste Nieuws.
He was friends on Facebook with another Syrian jihadi from Molenbeek, Abou Isleym, who was recently seen posing on the social networking site with a decapitated corpse.
Bilal wrote on Facebook in July: 'To all my brothers who stay in the country of infidels. The dogs threaten our people everywhere. You are living in a community of pigs. Even in your dreams you should not feel safe.'
It is now thought that the attacks were planned in Belgium by terrorists who communicated with each under the noses of security using Sony's PlayStation 4.
Belgian federal home affairs minister Jan Jambon has said that the device has been used by Islamic State agents to communicate because it is notoriously hard to monitor, and it is even more difficult to keep track of than the Whats-App mobile phone messaging application.
The gang, which is also believed to include a woman and two men who entered Europe posing as Syrian refugees, are thought to have travelled from Molenbeek to Paris in rented cars.
The suburb, which has a population of 90,000, has a large immigrant population andis one of the most deprived areas of the Belgian capital. It is known by locals as the 'den of terrorists' and has been linked to a number of deadly terror attacks in recent years.Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3320224/The-mastermind-terror-Officials-say-Paris-massacres-planned-Belgian-recruited-13-year-old-brother-fight-ISIS-Syria-posed-smiling-decapitated-bodies.html#ixzz3rhroA3aU Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook