Terror mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud could have been caught in JANUARY

Only days after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris and a Jewish supermarket, Abaaoud, 27, had been directing an ISIS cell in Belgium by phone from Athens.

The Belgians planned to swoop on suspects in the town of Verviers on January 15 but they were hoping Greek police would capture Abaaoud before they made their move.

But the Greeks missed him and when Abaaoud heard of the Verviers raids - in which two jihadis were killed - he vanished from his Athens hideout.

He is thought to have returned to ISIS headquarters in the Syrian city of Raqqa, where he began planning the horrific attacks on November 13 which killed 130 people.

It remains unclear how Abaaoud slipped through the Greek police’s net.

There is thought to have been an attempt to trace his mobile phone but although it located him in the centre of Athens they were unable to find him.

Greek police eventually carried out raids on two flats in Athens on January 17, two day after the Verviers raids. But Abaaoud, a Belgian national of Moroccan origin, was nowhere to be found.

An Algerian was arrested and extradited to Belgium and Abaaoud’s DNA was found in both flats.

A neighbour, Vasilis Katsanos, told the BBC he had seen Abaaoud in the street several times.

Another of the Paris attackers - Salah Abdeslam - also had a Greek connection.

He travelled there in August from Italy.

Abaaoud was finally killed after a shootout with police in Paris a few days after the attacks on the Bataclan music venue and various other targets in the city.

Also killed in the November 18 raid on a flat in the suburb of Saint-Denis were his cousin and a suspected suicide bomber.

(The Daily Star)