Inside Europe's Terror Attacks Panorama

Brussels is the latest European city to be bombed.

It's the work of the so-called Islamic State, IS.

The attacks came just days after this -

the arrest of Salah Abdeslam,

a leading member of the IS cell that attacked Paris last November.

GUNSHOTS

A Panorama team has been investigating

how IS plans and executes attacks in Europe.

We have seen secret files

that reveal how the terror group trains attackers in Syria.

He gave me some shooting lessons,

he said, "Imagine a rock concert in a European country.

"If we arm you, would you be ready to shoot in the crowd?"

And we've learned how IS supplies weapons to

its operatives here on the ground in Europe.

I opened the car,

there were three Kalashnikovs, four magazines.

We have seen intelligence that

reveals a secret race between IS and

the West's security agencies trying to stop attacks.

-TRANSLATION:

-They want to destroy our model of society,

so this is really a war.

Over the past year, Western intelligence agencies

have been trying to get information about

the Islamic State's plans to attack us.

They have foiled a number of plots and captured

the IS fighters involved.

We have seen secret intelligence transcripts of their interrogations.

One of these fighters gave the DGSI -

that's France's equivalent of MI5 -

details about the department inside IS

running its European terror campaign.

It's called Amni, meaning security.

1,500 people work for Amni.

I don't know how recruitment is done.

You have to be trustworthy to join.

Its role is to detect spies in Iraq and Syria.

That's its only internal role.

Its external role is to send people all over

the world to commit violent attacks.

And Europe was one of IS's prime targets.

Foreign fighters were hand-picked

to return and attack their homeland.

Each spy gets 50,000 euros from Amni to mount an attack in Europe.

Next, he provided a crucial piece of information

for the intelligence agencies about the commander of the attacks.

It is Abu Omar who keeps an eye on the files.

Abu Omar is only a pseudonym. His real name is

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the man responsible

for the attacks on Paris.

At the EU's crime and terrorism agency, Europol, officers have been

monitoring how IS has been organising itself to attack Europe.

You referred to the so-called Islamic State's

external-action command. What is the external-action command?

We think what's happened is that a new external-command force

has been set up within IS to transport terror

onto the streets of Europe, using special-forces-style tactics

with indiscriminate shootings, AK-47s,

wearing suicide belts, in a way we've never seen in Europe before.

Such a military-style assault would mark a worrying

and unprecedented advance in IS's tactics, led by Abaaoud.

From secret intelligence, we've gathered crucial evidence

that Abaaoud was at the very heart

of IS's new strategy to target Europe.

He was to spend most of 2015

plotting a series of attacks that were to culminate in

the slaughter here on the streets of Paris.

So who is Abdelhamid Abaaoud?

He was brought up in the Brussels district of Molenbeek.

He had a history of petty crime and spent time in prison,

where it's believed he was radicalised.

His family tell their solicitor

that they'd seen a dramatic change when he was released in 2012.

Abaaoud was highly critical of how his father was raising

the other children.

The father realised that his son was changing a lot,

saying that he was not giving

to the other children of the family a good

education, not a Muslim one.

That he was a bad example for the small kids.

In March 2013,

Abaaoud first travelled to Syria to fight the Assad regime.

At one point, he returned

home to Molenbeek to kidnap his 13-year-old brother, Younes.

He later taunted his father on the phone.

The father, he received a phone call saying,

"Don't search for Younes,

"you will not see him back any more in your whole life.

"I will learn him the real value of the Muslim religion.

"He is going with me to Syria."

Abaaoud's younger brother was, at the time,

believed to be IS's youngest jihadi.

HE SPEAKS ARABIC

Abaaoud later became notorious for his brutality when he was

seen in this IS video dragging corpses,

some beheaded, behind a 4X4.

Allahu Akbar.

All the men in this video came from Belgium.

If you want to understand how IS operates in Europe, you have to

understand why Belgium became so important.

It was a country Abaaoud would use repeatedly

as a base for operations.

One reason is the number of

Belgian jihadis who've ended up fighting in Syria.

Belgium has sent more per head than anywhere else in Europe.

Some former members of this boxing club drifted into extremism.

HE SPEAKS FRENCH

Here they try and fight radicalisation and they

understand why young men consider going to Syria.

High unemployment and feelings of discrimination are big factors.

Radicalisation doesn't start with a religious idea.

They're going because they're leaving something,

they're fed up with the society here.

Some here have even known people who have become suicide bombers.

HE SPEAKS FRENCH

-TRANSLATION:

-One day I watched the news.

I heard that some young guy had blown himself up.

I went on the internet and when I saw his face I was upset.

Many from Molenbeek who became jihadis were actively recruited.

One radicaliser stands out -

Khalid Zerkani.

HE SPEAKS FRENCH

-TRANSLATION:

-I believe that Khalid Zerkani was the biggest

recruiter Brussels has ever seen.

Journalist Philippe Engels has investigated how Zerkani operated.

HE SPEAKS FRENCH

-TRANSLATION:

-He was the co-ordinator.

The organiser of a real jihadist network with Mafia undertones.

It was like a machine sending young people to Syria.

Abaaoud was a petty criminal here in Molenbeek

and was involved with Zerkani.

Like Abaaoud, many of those sent to fight in Syria

by Zerkani were criminals.

We have seen intelligence that reveals how Zerkani worked.

He wouldn't just preach to would-be fighters, he doled out

money to assist in their travels and he put them

in touch with smugglers.

People like Zerkani were key in establishing

the Belgian presence in Syria that IS would exploit.

SHE SPEAKS FRENCH

-TRANSLATION:

-That's a photo of my son when he was six years old.

One of those Zerkani sent was Yoni Mayne.

He travelled to Syria along with

the two Abaaoud brothers.

His mother believed Zerkani pressured him into going.

-TRANSLATION:

-The phone kept ringing, even when he was asleep,

to harass him, you understand.

I heard, "Inshallah, inshallah, I'm going to leave."

She says Zerkani was responsible for a dramatic change in her son.

-TRANSLATION:

-He would wear robes only, like a Saudi.

At home, it was the Koran only.

The name of Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah until he went to sleep.

That's the way it was.

HE SPEAKS ARABIC

This video reveals where Yoni Mayne ended up

after travelling to Syria with Abaaoud to join IS.

Yoni Mayne was dead soon after.

Abaaoud was about to take on a new role in IS.

IS's expansion in Iraq triggered

an American-led coalition to launch air strikes against them.

It's about taking out an entire network,

decimating and discrediting

a militant cult masquerading

as a religious movement.

IS beheaded American journalist James Foley in Syria.

Around this time, IS made plans to strike Europe

and Abaaoud was preparing a cell which would involve sending

jihadis back from Syria to attack.

It was two men who'd come from Molenbeek that Abaaoud

chose to be his first recruits -

Sofiane Amghar and Khalid Ben Larbi.

The IS network was under way.

Amghar and Ben Larbi were sent on a mission

to set up a terror cell here in Verviers, Belgium.

We've established that Ben Larbi passed through

the UK on his way to Belgium.

We understand that he got into the UK illegally

using a passport belonging to a Dutch IS fighter.

One of the two persons came

first to the UK, then through France to Verviers.

The problem is that they are able to come with false paper

and that nobody is able to detect them.

It seems that he was never stopped or questioned

at St Pancras station as he left the UK.

We have seen secret intelligence that reveals

Abaaoud personally monitored their arrival in Verviers.

He contacted his brother Yassine,

who was in jail in Belgium, and said...

Abaaoud's cell laid up in this

unremarkable back street in Verviers.

Part of terrorist tradecraft is to choose

a safe house like this to remain as anonymous as possible.

When you choose a house in a very populated area,

with people living next to you,

above you, beneath you, people passing by all

the time, makes it very, very difficult to raid a house.

It's what they were allegedly planning to do

that would have sent shock waves around the world.

The mission that these guys had, that was to take police officers

from the street, to bring them in

-the house and behead them before the webcam.

-Behead them?

Yeah, behead them...

before the webcam and to send this action all over the world.

Abaaoud's plan seemed to be on track but

a tip-off led the security services to start

monitoring the safe house.

They had intercepted calls from Athens.

There were contacts between people in the house and

somebody in Greece and, at a certain time,

we learned that person was Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

That would be because you were intercepting

telephone calls between the cell and Greece?

That's a logical supposition, yes.

We've seen Belgian intelligence documents that leave

Abaaoud's involvement beyond doubt.

The documents say that Abaaoud was organising

the structure, providing instructions on which

documents to use - presumably false documents -

and which cars to steal.

And he was doing all this

from Greece, using at least five different

mobile numbers. What he didn't know is that

the intelligence services were listening in.

The Belgians had planted a secret listening device

in the house in Verviers.

GUNSHOTS

As they monitored the cell, the world was gripped by

dramatic events at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

12 people were murdered by jihadi gunmen

from al-Qaeda, including eight journalists

and two police officers...

..whilst a third gunman, claiming allegiance to IS,

shot dead a policewoman before killing a further

four people in a Jewish supermarket.

Fearing the cell in Verviers was about to launch

a similar attack, a week later the Belgians decided to act.

GUNSHOTS

As the gun battle raged,

the listening device picked up the jihadis' final words,

a prayer before they died.

GUNSHOT

French special forces, the GIGN, the equivalent of the British SAS,

had been drafted in to assist in the operation.

HE SPEAKS FRENCH

-TRANSLATION:

-Generally, when we intervene with explosives,

the enemy inside tends to calm down

immediately, so it's quite easy to stop him.

Not in this case. Here, we faced resistance to the very end.

Two of Abaaoud's team

were shot dead in the fierce firefight.

A third man tried to escape through a window

at the back but was caught.

The first IS cell in Europe had been neutralised,

but what about their commander?

Abaaoud was 1,600 miles away in Athens.

We understand from intelligence

that the CIA and Israel's Mossad

helped track and locate Abaaoud in Greece.

There was now a rare chance to catch and stop him.

It's believed the CIA planned to intercept Abaaoud

but the plan failed.

Abaaoud, whose DNA was found

in this apartment, was one step ahead

and escaped to Syria.

Weeks later, Abaaoud resurfaced in the IS magazine, Dabiq,

bragging about plotting terrorist attacks under the noses

of the West's intelligence agencies.

Intelligence services knew that Abaaoud would learn

lessons from Verviers, and now, back in Syria,

would pass them on to IS.

IS has what I would call an army of radicalised people

who have learned to handle arms and explosives,

people who have participated in violence,

who have been indoctrinated to do

the worst, and who are willing to do so.

With Abaaoud now back in Syria rebuilding his network,

intelligence reports indicate that

2015 developed into a race, a race between

Abaaoud and Western intelligence agencies

who were desperately trying to find him and stop him.

In its war against Europe, IS, as well as

preparing cells of trained killers,

developed another strategy - to inspire

individuals who had never been to Syria

to carry out attacks in their own countries.

And that's how IS has operated so far in the UK.

This IS online propaganda glorifies

the actions of so-called lone wolves who operate

without the support of IS networks.

Where I got hold of it from was from IS members,

-from their Twitter accounts.

-Right.

This journalist contacted IS over the internet,

pretending to be willing to launch a suicide-bomb attack

in the UK. He asked us to protect his identity.

He established a relationship with

a high-ranking British recruiter operating from

Syria called Junaid Hussain.

Junaid was very straight-to-business, he wasn't

very friendly. I got the idea

that he wanted to catch hold of someone quickly,

and I just said to him, "I want to do the will of Allah,"

and from there he said,

"You should do something over there."

Did he mention a target?

He mentioned a target, it was the Armed Forces Day,

Lee Rigby parade in Woolwich.

That was on June 27th, 2015.

He told me to go into the middle

of the crowd and just press the button,

and from there I would go straight to Jannah.

-Paradise.

-Paradise, yeah.

The journalist was also sent a series of DIY terror manuals

over the internet.

One of them contained the instructions

on how to make the type of device

that was detonated at the Boston Marathon.

The first impression I got off it was how easy

it looked to build, because all the items

that are described that you've got to get hold of,

you can just pick them up from any local shop.

Once he received the manuals, he told the police.

But last year, one of Junaid Hussain's real Twitter followers

was planning an actual bomb attack in London.

Mohammed Rehman and his wife, Sana Khan,

used similar instructions to build a bomb.

Rehman even filmed this test in his back garden.

They planned to mark the tenth anniversary

of the London 7/7 bombings of 2005

with their own suicide attack.

What do you think would have happened had they not been arrested?

I seriously think that Mohammed would have

set off a bomb in London,

a suicide bomb, and there would have been another

7/7 in the UK.

Mohammed Rehman was sentenced to 27 years

and Sana Khan to 25.

Stopping this plot was the result of good intelligence by

UK undercover police officers.

On mainland Europe, intelligence services faced a more complex

problem - heavily armed lone operatives

controlled remotely by IS.

A plot to strike in Paris was foiled, but just how it

was uncovered is an extraordinary story.

We have seen secret intelligence which

includes the interrogation of

the captured IS operative who was involved.

He reveals how he botched the mission.

I placed the gun at the height of my thigh,

point-blank, and I shot.

I thought to myself,

"If I call the police, they might actually shoot me,"

so that's why I called the ambulance instead.

And they immediately put me in touch with the police.

Officers followed the trail of blood to his car and there they

discovered a huge arsenal of weapons.

They had uncovered an IS operative.

It was on a trip to his native Algeria that Sid Ghlam

says he first came into contact with IS supporters.

He then travelled to Turkey, wanting to go to Syria,

but IS commanders there had other plans for him.

They said I needed to go back to France because

my help there was needed.

IS had a tactic for controlling him remotely.

They showed me how to stay in touch with them via the internet

using encrypted messages.

Before he left for France,

IS gave Ghlam a crucial piece of information.

It was so sensitive, he wasn't allowed to write it down.

It was a location in Paris.

Then they showed me the map of a car park

in Aulnay-sous-Bois, and they said I needed to memorise that place.

A few weeks later when Ghlam was back in Paris,

he received an instruction from IS to

go to the car park.

They said, "There will be a car and you will need to find some keys

"on top of one of the car wheels," so I drove

there, I opened the car.

There were two bags, so I took them.

During his interrogation, he tells the police

exactly what he found in the bags.

Three Kalashnikovs, some

bulletproof vests, I think three of them, four magazines,

some police vests,

walkie-talkie stations, tactical vests.

IS had developed

a sophisticated network. Lone operatives could

be dropped into a target area and a supporting team would

then supply them with guns and ammunition.

This made it harder to uncover the network.

Aimen Dean is a former member of

al-Qaeda who became a spy for British intelligence.

He understands the importance of a separate logistics team.

In the past, a lone wolf, by definition, is someone who is

expected to select a target, make the reconnaissance, secure

the materials and the weapons and then execute the attack.

However, Isis decided that this is not right.

As far as the logistics are concerned, someone else will do it.

Armed to the teeth, Sid Ghlam says

he was instructed by IS to select a target for mass murder.

They told me to look for a good church.

I chose the one they told me to have a look at

in one of their messages.

And this was his target.

What would have happened that Sunday if the attack had been successful?

-TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH:

-It would have been a bloodbath

before police could even intervene.

But on the morning of the attack, the plan went wrong.

Police believe he tried to steal a car, but

during the carjacking the driver was shot dead.

Shortly afterwards, Ghlam shot himself.

If it was their intention to launch

a major strike in Europe, it seems IS

chose the wrong man. Whether Ghlam was too reluctant,

too nervous or too incompetent, on this occasion

they had failed.

When a French national arrived

in Syria to join IS in June 2015,

Abaaoud spotted another opportunity.

The man had a French passport but it was due to expire.

If Abaaoud could train him quickly, he could send

him back to Europe to launch a fresh attack.

But Abaaoud's plan was foiled when the French intercepted

the IS fighter before he could strike.

We've seen a transcript of his interrogation

in which he describes being

personally trained to kill by Abaaoud.

He gave me some shooting lessons by showing me how

to handle the Kalashnikov.

He made me shoot round by round and in bursts.

Abaaoud honed his recruit's new skills, training him

for all-out assaults with explosives.

He trained me to use a handgun

and a green Russian stun grenade.

He told me it was set on three seconds.

He drew silhouettes in the house. He told me to take the weapon,

throw the grenade inside,

wait for a small explosion and enter and shoot the targets.

I threw the grenade in the house. I heard a small explosion.

I went in, shot three targets, and then the grenade exploded.

I was bleeding from the arm and the leg.

Abaaoud detailed the kind of mass-casualty attack

he wanted Hame to carry out. It was a sobering indication

of the kind of target IS would select in Paris.

He just told me to choose an easy target.

Imagine a rock concert in a European country.

He specified the best thing

to do was to wait there for the intervention forces

and die fighting with hostages.

He told me, "Whoever rushes against the enemy

"will have the reward of two martyrs."

The intelligence reveals that

although Reda Hame was supposed to be a lone attacker,

he was to be provided with

the weapons by an IS logistics team.

He said it wasn't a problem to find weapons and equipment.

I would just have to ask what I needed.

In my opinion, they have networks.

The arrest and interrogation of Reda Hame

should have been a cause for celebration,

a potential massacre at a rock concert averted.

But what he then went on to say was a chilling prediction

three months before the Paris attacks.

All I can say is that this will happen very soon.

Over there it's like a real factory,

they're really trying to strike France or Europe.

Given the determination of the people I've met,

this wouldn't come as a surprise

to me if there was some action soon.

The authorities knew an attack could come anywhere,

any time, driven by the commitment

of Abaaoud and his fighters.

-TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH:

-We are dealing with religious fanaticism,

with people who are determined, who know what they have to do,

who choose the time, the place, the objective, how to do it

and when to do it.

In summer 2015, Western intelligence agencies

were on high alert.

The race to find and stop Abaaoud was intensifying.

We understand the CIA

warned that one of Abaaoud's network was trying to

get hold of European ID cards.

And the intelligence warnings continued,

with one source reporting that Abaaoud was now IS's

minister for war.

We now also understand that

the CIA issued a warning that Abaaoud was

in contact with Turkish smugglers about getting

fighters into Europe.

During our investigation, we heard rumours that one of

Abaaoud's key lieutenants, Mohamed Abrini,

visited the UK last summer.

Was one of those members of Abaaoud's network who

went to the UK Mohamed Abrini?

-Yes.

-Is it known what he did in the UK?

SHE SPEAKS FRENCH

-TRANSLATION:

-No, I don't know.

That is the secret of the intelligence services.

We understand that one member of the network,

Abrini, went to the UK, came back to Europe,

came back to Belgium or France,

and was stopped, and on his phone were pictures of

what could have been possible targets in the UK.

Is that correct?

We still have to establish what he did in the UK.

So I cannot give any comment about that.

Were there photographs on Abrini's phone

that identified possible targets like

-a football stadium?

-It's a piece of the judicial file,

I cannot give any comment.

You don't know what Abrini was doing in the UK?

We are working on it.

We know that Abrini visited Birmingham

and we understand that a photograph

of a football stadium was found on his mobile phone.

And there were even more disturbing

intelligence reports that Abaaoud wanted to

send 60 IS fighters to attack Belgium, France,

Germany and the UK,

all partners in the coalition against IS.

In October, MI6 and MI5 met

with a partner agency to discuss Abaaoud

and the threat posed by such a potential onslaught.

Other agencies were also discussing setting up

a specialist team to target Abaaoud.

A meeting in Paris was planned to finalise

the details.

Originally on the 13th of November 2015,

the date was ominous.

It was the date of the Paris attacks.

By then, it was too late.

This is one member of Abaaoud's next terror cell training in Syria

to attack Paris. It includes French,

Belgians and Iraqis.

This IS propaganda video

features some of them beheading people.

It's a tactic that this former al-Qaeda member understands.

What was the purpose in making

the attackers carry out such brutal actions?

The brutality exhibited shows all the signs of it being a test of

loyalty, so basically if they show any hesitation

also they would be excluded from the attack and the operation.

The most recent attempts to attack Europe had failed,

but now IS were learning from their mistakes.

The network Abaaoud built

would evade all attempts by the authorities to detect them.

This strategy can be seen

in the support network he built.

His chief lieutenant was a petty criminal from Molenbeek,

Salah Abdeslam. He committed crime alongside Abaaoud and he had a big

advantage - although on a Belgian watchlist,

he was in the lowest possible category.

We have seen notes from a police interview with

Salah early last year about his friendship with Abaaoud.

He admits they had been friends for years but said they

had never spoken about jihad. He is not questioned again.

Here in Molenbeek, Salah Abdeslam

seemed just another small-time criminal.

SHE SPEAKS FRENCH

-TRANSLATION:

-Every day we get reports

about arrests, about drug problems, gun problems,

false papers, illegal trade. And Abdeslam

was known more as a small delinquent or

a petty criminal than being a radical.

Salah Abdeslam's brother Brahim was also a petty criminal.

He is seen here being arrested for a robbery.

He also became a member of the terror cell,

helping with logistics planning for the Paris attacks.

We have seen a lot of jihadist groups operating in Europe

having criminal links, because many of them, in many

cases they have, as it were, graduated

from petty street crime to something more serious.

Often as a result of stays in prison.

Considered low-risk petty criminals,

the Abdeslam brothers were able to set about getting

what the terror cell needed.

Since they're not on the authorities' radar, they're able to

drive around, they're able basically to make

purchases, transport goods without being

noticed by the authorities.

And I think this is where the genius of IS's planning process is.

We have been told that it was criminal contacts

here in Belgium that supplied the weapons

for the Paris cell.

What you tend to find is when you look at these cases that

the criminals are simply engaging in

entrepreneurial activity, the weapons

are being bought. In many cases it suits them to

know as little as possible.

All they're interested in is the criminal transaction.

But it wasn't just the logistics team that

were able to outsmart the authorities.

Abaaoud and the rest of the attack team

were able to make their way back from Syria without detection.

Bilal Hadfi would also become one of Abaaoud's cell for Paris.

Belgian police were told

he was planning to return from Syria.

They monitored locations where they thought he might turn up.

Despite the fact that so many

people were involved, information about

the planned attacks didn't leak out.

I would suspect that they were pretty communication-secure aware

and it does seem that the members of this

group must have been very surveillance aware

because they were, in some cases, on watchlists.

It's a kind of mind-set that,

as it were, understands what it is to be a hunted individual.

Despite having to keep low profiles,

Abaaoud's support network, led by Salah, managed to buy weapons,

explosives and detonators.

They also rented a hotel room and this safe house in Paris.

By the evening of the 12th of November, Abaaoud and

his men were in Paris ready to strike.

Using French intelligence documents, we have pieced

together how Abaaoud planned simultaneous

attacks at multiple sites.

This was his first target - the Stade de France.

Among spectators at the game between France and Germany

was the French president, Francois Hollande.

According to the investigation,

the gate closed at 9.10, a few minutes after kick-off.

A witness says that he saw one individual

trying to bluff his way in here

at Gate R but the security guard was suspicious

and wouldn't let him in.

The obvious intention was to get inside

the Stade de France and detonate.

They were unlucky they didn't get into the stadium

but they regrouped. They had a Plan B.

Having failed to get inside the stadium,

they then each moved to new positions.

Intelligence indicates that the bombers

were communicating with a mobile number in Belgium.

At exactly 9.17,

Abaaoud's first suicide bomber detonated his device...

..killing himself and a civilian.

After the first explosion, the second attacker waited

three minutes and then detonated his device.

EXPLOSION AND GUNSHOT

As the stadium and the surrounding area were

being cleared, the third attacker triggered his bomb.

Each of the three suicide bombers' vests

were packed with small metal objects.

The damage caused around the area is still visible today.

Although there were 80,000 spectators watching the football

inside the Stade de France, from Abaaoud's point of view,

the operation was a failure.

Only four people died and three of them were the suicide bombers.

As president Francois Hollande was

rushed to safety from the stadium,

the centre of Paris was descending into chaos as Abaaoud

took personal charge of the night's carnage.

The attacks were carried out with meticulous planning

and co-ordinated military precision.

Five minutes after the two suicide bombers had blown

themselves up outside the Stade de France -

that was at 9.17 and 9.20 -

Abaaoud and his unit began their attack on

the cafes and restaurants here in the heart of Paris.

This time, given the failures of the past,

Abaaoud was leaving nothing to chance.

He was here on the ground directing operations.

At these cafes in central Paris,

Abaaoud and his gunmen ambushed and killed 14 people.

Five more were gunned down here.

One of the attackers moved in for the kill at this cafe.

Two women were lying on the pavement

but his gun failed to fire.

As Abaaoud and his men slaughtered another 20 people here,

the bloody climax of the operation was about to

begin at an American rock concert at the Bataclan.

These were places where Western people

were engaging in activities that

Islamic State regard as inherently sinful and hence

the people engaging in these activities were

deserving of divine vengeance and punishment.

The French investigation documents reveal that the attackers had

downloaded detailed floor plans of the Bataclan.

These are the actual images retrieved from one of

the attackers' mobile phones. The investigation documents

also show that the Bataclan team was

in touch with a mobile in Belgium.

One of the gunmen sent a last text message before dumping

his phone in a bin.

Two of the gunmen went in

through the front of the Bataclan and started firing.

GUNSHOTS

As panic erupted inside, some of the audience

rushed to one of the exits, which opened onto this alleyway.

SHOUTING

But a third gunman was waiting.

They had anticipated how people would respond.

Those trying to escape were mowed down.

Abaaoud's plan to distract and confuse

the police by simultaneous attacks

across the city seemed to be working.

There are only so many security forces,

it takes them time to mobilise, so splitting them up

and weakening their overall impact is an obvious

thing to think about.

The gunmen had time to

secure the Bataclan by placing human shields in

front of doors and windows.

Even one of France's most senior police officers was

taken aback by their tactics.

SHE SPEAKS FRENCH

-TRANSLATION:

-Who would have expected that they turned up like that,

armed to the teeth?

Who were used to combat in the Iraq-Syria zone,

who came like military officers to carry out

a military operation.

The difference is that they came to die.

GUNSHOTS

What's clear is that the gunmen inside

the Bataclan were able to kill for over two hours.

On standby, ready in Paris, were 40 elite officers from

the GIGN, the French equivalent of the SAS,

but protocol dictated it was police units, not the GIGN,

that should intervene.

Yet they had been used against Abaaoud's cell in Verviers.

The irony is that the GIGN was used in Belgium

but was not used in France.

HE SPEAKS FRENCH

-TRANSLATION:

-Yes, because the units we

work with did not come to us to request

our help in these operations.

If you had been used, you might have intervened much sooner

and more effectively, and more

lives may have been saved.

-TRANSLATION:

-That's possible, but the unit which conducted

operations felt it was in a position to

complete the mission at its own level, which I totally respect.

Abaaoud had outwitted the Western security services

who had been trying to thwart him. He had won the race.

After a series of failed operations, Abaaoud's

meticulous planning - the recruitment, training

and logistics - finally paid off.

The resulting carnage is a grim testimony.

130 dead and almost 700 injured.

Don't the Paris attacks represent a huge intelligence failure?

HE SPEAKS FRENCH

-TRANSLATION:

-It is obvious there have been failures.

There were mistakes.

We shouldn't accept this situation, especially because

a number of terrorists were known. So, of course,

there were intelligence failures.

The intelligence services are overwhelmed by the situation.

As Paris went into lockdown after the attacks,

Abaaoud's chief organiser, Salah Abdeslam,

was on the streets.

The police hadn't yet discovered he was involved.

He needed to escape, so he called on two friends from

Molenbeek who sped to Paris to pick him up.

We have seen copies of their police interrogations

about the escape.

Hamza Attou described Salah Abdeslam's behaviour as

they pick him up in Paris nearly five hours

after the attacks ended.

Attou claims Abdeslam admitted his involvement.

And he claimed Abdeslam threatened him.

SIREN

But rather than flee, Abdeslam and his

associates drove around a district of Paris

for 20 minutes.

Then he ordered the driver to head for Brussels.

After this, they ended up on

the motorway and drove straight into a police checkpoint.

It was a chance to catch Abdeslam

but, even though the driver of the car says

he told police he had been drinking,

they were still let go.

Despite more police checkpoints,

they reach this service station

and Salah Abdeslam was confident enough to be out of the car.

By the time they were here,

they had been stopped three times at police checkpoints.

They showed their real identity cards

and, despite the fact that Salah was on a watchlist, they were

allowed to continue.

We've been told that if Salah had

been stopped just 15 minutes later, he would

have been flagged as someone connected to the Paris attacks.

CAR HORN BLARES

Salah Abdeslam arrived back in Brussels around noon.

He was on the run, so he decided to change his appearance.

Attou says Abdeslam pleaded for his loyalty.

Abdeslam then called on another associate for the next

stage of his escape.

We've also seen his police interrogation.

They asked me to go to a cafe

where we could get a drink and talk.

Salah Abdeslam feared his associated might be monitored.

Before he went into the cafe, Salah asked us

to leave our phones behind in the car.

He told us to take the batteries out and

leave the handsets in the vehicle.

He asked me some questions about the news - how many had

been killed, how many suicide bombers there had been.

He asked me how many of the attackers were dead

and seemed to be analysing the situation.

He also told me that he was not supposed

to be there when things were happening.

Oulkadi drove him to another district of Brussels.

It was the last known sighting of him for months.

He squeezed my arm and said

we would never see each other again, then he left.

He took the first street on the right and then disappeared.

Back in Paris, Abaaoud was still at large.

We have seen the intelligence on where he was.

Abaaoud was hiding out somewhere around here,

which is an industrial area,

and the report of the French investigation gives very

detailed instructions on

how to find Abaaoud's hideout.

This is where the world's most wanted man had holed up.

He was planning another attack but needed help.

In an act that would lead to his undoing,

he turned to a woman who had wanted to marry him years earlier.

It was his cousin, Hasna.

Hasna came to this hideout

but the problem was she has brought a friend...

..and after they left the bush, the friend rang the police.

Despite the resources of the CIA,

the Mossad and European security agencies, who had been

desperate to find him, it was a tip-off from Hasna's

friend that finally led the hunters to Abaaoud.

The police watched him for the next two days.

Hasna was also under surveillance

as she rented this flat in Saint-Denis.

It was to be Abaaoud's final hiding place.

Five days after the Paris attacks, with Hasna, Abaaoud

and another attacker inside, the police

stormed the building.

GUNSHOTS

Despite 5,000 bullets being fired

by the police and their claims of a long firefight,

there was only one gun in the flat.

This police photo revealed it was this

nine-millimetre pistol.

SHOUTING

The siege ended when the cell member standing beside Abaaoud and Hasna

detonated his suicide vest...

..killing all of them.

This week's bloodshed in Brussels shows that

IS's ability to hit Europe did not die with Abaaoud.

Just as in Paris,

these attacks were carefully coordinated.

Multiple civilian targets struck in quick succession.

It is really going to be hard for the security forces to

mobilise quickly, coordinate, so it is

a very difficult situation for them to have to deal with,

it creates a lot of uncertainty, panic,

fear, exactly the things that terrorists are keen to achieve.

For the future, the outlook is bleak.

-TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH:

-We are going towards events

even more serious, several cities and other

countries could be attacked.

The problem for the security services is that no-one

knows how many operatives are still out there

ready to die for their cause.

The big question now is - can IS be stopped?

It is likely and probable that things like that will happen

again and I fear that, in the West,

Belgium included, we will have to live for the coming years

with the threat of that kind of terrorism.

The fight against the so-called Islamic State

is not yet over.