The extremist thought to have masterminded the terrorist attacks in Paris boasted of how police missed opportunities to stop him plotting atrocities before leaving for Syria.

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, from Belgium, has been named by French officials as the man behind the massacre of at least 129 people.

Belgian authorities had suspected him of being the head of a terror cell which was smashed in January in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, before Greek police later arrested a man who matched his description.

But since then the whereabouts of the Islamic State (IS) militant, in his late 20s, remained unknown, although earlier this year the jihadists' English-language magazine Dabiq suggested he was in Syria.

In an interview in the February edition he claimed he had travelled to Belgium to "terrorise the crusaders waging war against the Muslims".

He also claimed a police officer who stopped him had failed to recognise him even after his picture had been sold to the media.

He said: "I was even stopped by an officer who contemplated me so as to compare me to the picture, but he let me go, as he did not see the resemblance!"

And Abaaoud claimed he was able to "safely" travel back to Syria.

"I was able to leave and come to Sham (Syria) despite being chased after by so many intelligence agencies," he said.

"All this proves that a Muslim should not fear the bloated image of the crusader intelligence. My name and picture were all over the news yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations against them, and leave safely when doing so became necessary."

Abaaoud is also believed to have links to previous foiled terror attacks in France, including one on a Paris-bound high-speed train that was thwarted when passengers overpowered a gunman in August.

He grew up in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, which has become a key focus for investigators.

Meanwhile, the Sun said that Belgian prosecutors are looking into funding links between Abaaoud, a now-defunct group called Sharia4Belgium and British preachers.

Eric van der Sypt of the Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office told the paper: "We're investigating that lead. It would not be unusual that these people have links between them."

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