France jails man caught with photo of Paris attacker, ammunition

A French court jailed a man for three years on Friday after police found a photo of key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam in his car and a stash of weapons at his home.

A French court jailed a man for three years on Friday after police found a photo of key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam in his car and a stash of weapons at his home.

Mouez Dridi, a 41-year-old forklift truck driver, told the court in the southern French town of Valence he had the picture of Abdeslam stuck to the sun-visor of his car so that he could identify the jihadist suspect if he saw him and denounce his actions.

Abdeslam, a 26-year-old Frenchman who was living in Belgium and who is thought to have played a key logistical role in the November 13 attacks that killed 130 people in Paris, is still on the run.

Local police had flagged Dridi to the French intelligence agency on December 10 after he was seen praying on a running track near Valence.

Investigators searching his home on December 10 found an arsenal of loaded weapons -- a sub-machine gun, a rifle, a Mauser pistol and “no less than 503 pieces of ammunition”, prosecutor Eric Sandjivy said.

Dridi’s lawyer Sophie Turpin said her client had “no intention of using these weapons; he did not know how to use them”.