among them was a petty criminal named abdelhamid abaaoud.he son of a shopkeeper from brussels, abaaoud had spent time in prison for assault and minor crimes. as isis was emerging in syria, abaaoud began to draw on his criminal network to recruit volunteers to the cause. >> (translated): abaaoud had a particular profile, which allowed him to recruit a whole network that obeyed him. >> narrator: alain grignard is a senior counterterror officer with the belgian federal police, an expert in islamic extremism who speaks fluent arabic. his agency started tracking abaaoud's network in 2013. >> (translated): i think these recruits obeyed him not only for ideological reasons, but also because he was a ringleader, because they had gone to school together, because they were friends or family, a lot of connections that are difficult to assess when you're not inside these circles. >> narrator: many of abaaoud's recruits came from a single brussels neighborhood: molenbeek, the country's second-poorest district, with a large population of unemployed young