A French court has acquitted a man charged with harbouring Islamist terrorists after they carried out the November 2015 Paris attacks, bringing a surprising end to the first criminal trial over the deadliest terrorism attack in peacetime France.

The presiding judge said the Paris court found Jawad Bendaoud, 31, not guilty of providing lodging to two of the attackers and helping them hide from police when they were the most wanted criminals in France.

Addressing Bendaoud at a verdict hearing on Wednesday, Isabelle Prévost-Desprez said the evidence was “insufficient to prove your guilt”.

Bendaoud, who was standing behind a glass-enclosed dock, blew kisses to the public and his lawyers upon hearing his acquittal. He faced up to six years in prison if he was convicted of harbouring terrorists.

Bendaoud denied knowing the identity of the men to whom he rented a small flat in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. One of the two men he sheltered was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader of the attacks on 13 November 2015.

The court also convicted and sentenced two co-defendants on Wednesday.

Mohamed Soumah, who was accused of acting as an intermediary with Bendaoud to secure lodging for the two fugitives, received a five-year prison sentence. Youssef Ait-Boulahcen, who was accused of knowing the extremists’ whereabouts and not informing authorities, was sentenced to three years plus another year suspended. Both had denied the charges.

Bendaoud has been imprisoned for 27 months pending his trial. It is unclear when he will be released.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the coordinated attacks that killed 130 peopled.

Of the nine men who directly carried out the attacks, seven died at the scene. The other were killed five day later during a police siege at the Saint-Denis flat.

During the trial, Bendaoud said he rented the flat to the two men only to make money. He claimed he thought at the time that all the extremists had died in the attacks.

Bendaoud also told the court he had nothing to do with terrorists or jihadist ideology because “I love life, women, my son and my mother too much”.

Investigators found no extremist files or traces of jihadist sites in computers and phones used by Bendaoud, and nothing showing his possible religious “radicalisation”.

Bendaoud became known after he gave a surprising TV interview during the police raid on the flat. He approached the security perimeter and spoke to journalists to proclaim his innocence.

“I wasn’t aware they were terrorists. I was told to put up two people for three days, I helped out normally,” he told a reporter before a police officer arrested him live on camera.

While the trial did not directly deal with the attacks, about 500 victims of the attacks and their relatives joined the legal action as civil parties in the case, or applied to be registered as plaintiffs.