The trial of a drug dealer and slum landlord accused of harbouring two members of the cell that attacked Paris in November 2015 has given a glimpse of the tense five days after the deadliest night in France since the second world war.

The trial of Jawad Bendaoud, which opened last month and is the first linked to the attacks that killed 130 people and injured 500 more, has heard from survivors and victims’ relatives who have told horrific stories of loss and the desire to see justice. Bendaoud has provoked anger from relatives over his behaviour in court, where he has bragged about his criminal activities and sex life.

He has also openly fought with his co-defendant and fellow dealer, Mohamed Soumah, who is being prosecuted for failing to alert police about the terrorists’ plot. A third man, Yussef Aitboulahcen, the brother of a woman killed in a raid on the terrorists’ hideout, is also on trial.

The court case has pieced together the story of how the suspected coordinator of the attacks, a senior Islamic State jihadi from Belgium, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and another gunman hid while allegedly plotting another attack on the business district of La Défense. They were killed, along with Hasna Aitboulahcen, in a dawn police assault on a slum flat in Saint-Denis north of Paris, which belonged to Bendaoud.

The media initially claimed Hasna Aitboulahcen was “the first female suicide bomber to blow herself up in Europe”. It later emerged that she was not wearing a suicide belt and was Abaaoud’s cousin who had been called to try to find him a place to hide.

Three different groups of jihadis attacked the French capital on the night of 13 November 2015. Four men targeted the national stadium, the Stade de France, with suicide bombs. Three gunmen walked into a rock gig at the Bataclan theatre and opened fire. Three more drove through a busy area of the city, stopping outside bars and restaurants to shoot dead scores of people sitting at pavement tables. Almost all killed themselves or were killed, but two of the “restaurant gunmen”, Abaaoud and his accomplice Chakib Akrouh, managed to get away. They took the metro through Paris and hid in undergrowth next to a road outside the city.

Armed police stand guard as a van carrying Jawad Bendaoud arrives at the courthouse. Photograph: Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty Images

Two nights after the attacks, Hasna Aitboulahcen, 26, who had grown up in children’s homes and foster families after experiencing violence at the hands of her mother and relatives, received a call from a member of the cell in Belgium asking her to find a place for Abaaoud to hide.

A French woman of Moroccan heritage, she was described in court as a regular cocaine user who sometimes wore a full-face Islamic veil and at other times “dressed like a rapper”. The court also heard that she held affection for Abaaoud. She had seen a video of him with Isis in Syria in March 2014, smiling and driving a pickup truck dragging mutilated corpses in the dust behind him.

Abaaoud was France’s most wanted man and his face was everywhere when she snuck out to meet him. She even told her adviser at the local unemployment centre: “I saw my cousin, he’s been on TV, they’re looking for him.”

Aitboulahcen spent 48 hours calling around trying to find a flat for the fugitives. She called her dealer Mohamed Soumah, who put her in touch with Bendaoud, who offered a fetid flat with no water or toilet for €150 (£130). Both denied knowing the men they were helping were terrorists. Soumah said he only helped because he wanted to sleep with Aitboulahcen. It was Aitboulahcen’s flatmate who alerted the police.

Aitboulahcen also made dozens of calls to her brother Yussef, who subsequently tried to erase his phone’s memory. In court all three defendants denied they knew anything about terrorists, despite lawyers for victims’ families alleging they could not have missed the manhunt for the fugitives. Bendaoud and Soumah described themselves as criminals and “imbeciles, not terrorists”.

Bendaoud described shaking hands with Abaaoud, who arrived at the squat on 17 November wearing a football shirt of the Paris team PSG and asked which direction to pray in. Bendaoud told the owner of a local pizzeria about the “dodgy Belgians” he had rented a flat to, but he told the court he had not recognised them as the wanted terrorists because he had been high on crack cocaine after a 19-year-old who he was having an affair with told him she was pregnant.

He later said the TV in his bedroom had been broken so he had not seen the news. “Why would I lie? My life is over. I had a new cocaine-dealing project, but who will want to be my associate now?” he said.

A man called Abdallah, who lost both of his sisters in the attacks, told the court: “What shocks me is the lack of seriousness with which Mr Bendaoud and Mr Soumah are taking this trial. Behind those who are on trial today there are families that have been obliterated.”

The trial ends next week with sentencing to follow at a later date.

Monday also sees the trial in Belgium of Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the 10 alleged Paris attackers. He escaped from the group that attacked the Stade de France stadium and fled by car over the Belgian border.

He faces trial over a shootout in Brussels that led to his capture. He is also allegedly linked to the cell that carried out the March 2016 suicide bombings in Brussels days after his arrest.