A French official has identified 27-year-old Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud as the suspected mastermind of Friday's Paris terror attacks.

Officials believe he is linked to the thwarted attacks on a Paris-bound high-speed train and Paris area church earlier this year, according to The Associated Press. The train attack was stopped by three young American passengers on board.

The official, who has direct knowledge of the investigation, was not authorized to be publicly identified as speaking about the ongoing probe.

Abaaoud, who was once a student at one of Brussels' most prestigious high schools, is thought to be in Syria, according to Belgian media reports from RTL and RTBF.

In a January interview in Dabiq, an english-language ISIS propaganda magazine, Abaaoud, going by the name Abu Umar al-Baljiki, is seen in fatigues carrying a high-powered weapon and holding a copy of Koran and an Islamic State flag. He is pictured with two other Belgian ISIS members who he says were killed in an anti-terror raid in Verviers, which is in eastern Belgium.

The Belgian, whose parents are Moroccan immigrants, said he had planned to “terrorize the crusaders waging war against the Muslims,” plotting with the two men and obtaining weapons, according to the interview.

In the interview, Abaaoud said he secretly returned to Belgium from Syria to lead the Verviers terror cell departing Europe again in the aftermath of the January raid despite having his picture broadcast across the news. Authorities described him as the mastermind of the cell.

"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!" he said.

Belgian broadcaster RTBF says after he left Belgium he was tracked in Greece and then Syria where he worked to recruit for ISIS.

He enlisted his then 13-year-old brother, Younes Abaaoud, who joined him in Syria.

Abaaoud's father, a shopkeeper called Omar, said the boy was taken to Syria after his older brother was brainwashed in Belgium into joining ISIS.

"Abdelhamid has brought shame to our family. Our lives are equally destroyed. Why would he want to kill innocent Belgians? Our family owes everything to this country," he told the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws earlier this year.

In July, he was sentenced in absentia to 20 years in prison by the Brussels criminal court.

Seven people are in custody in Belgium suspected of links to the attacks and an international arrest warrant has been issued for a Belgian-born Frenchman believed involved in the attacks and who is still at large.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.