Interview: Claude Moniquet, co-founder and CEO of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security C: Emma Alberici speaks with former French foreign intelligence officer Claude Moniquet in Brussels and asks him whether he was surprised at how well armed and organised the Jihadists were when they attacked and killed people in Paris.

EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: Claude Moniquet spent 20 years as a French foreign intelligence officer working with the DGSE, which is the equivalent of Australia's ASIS, the UK's MI-6 or America's CIA.

He's now the co-founder and CEO of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Centre, based in Belgium and he joins us now from Brussels.

Claude Moniquet, thank you very much for being there for us.

CLAUDE MONIQUET, EUROPEAN STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY CENTRE: It's a pleasure.

EMMA ALBERICI: We now know more than seven men were involved in the Paris attacks. At least one of them was known to French authorities as a radical who has spent time in Syria.

As a former intelligence officer yourself, are you surprised that these men managed to get hold of Kalashnikovs and explosive vests and carry out a carefully coordinated attack without triggering any alarm bells?

CLAUDE MONIQUET: No, it's not so surprising when you know ISIS, Islamic State, and when you know how they work and when you know some of the people, including of course Abaaoud in Syria, who are probably involved in this plot. It's not so, it's not so surprising.

Abaaoud is a very clever man. A lot of people working for ISIS as terrorists have a profile of underdogs: very bad background, bad family and so on. Abaaoud is all the opposite. He comes from a good family, middle-class. He had a good school process and he is a clever man.

For a reason we don't know, approximately a few years ago he began to radicalise and he went to Syria. And then in Syria he became a kind of, let's say, an Emir, as said people in the jihadist movement: a chief for the French-speaking people in ISIS. The man is intelligent; he's clever.

It's not the first time he tried to hit in Europe but until now he failed. But as he's intelligent and as he has all the means of ISIS, which attracted thousands of Europeans, it's not so complicated for him to organise from Syria an attack in Paris, especially of course because he was from Brussels and he has his own contact, his own personal...