A Lebanese-Canadian academic has been convicted in absentia of terrorism charges and sentenced to life in prison over a bombing outside a Paris synagogue in 1980 that killed four and wounded 46.

The court in the French capital issued an arrest warrant for Hassan Diab, who lives in Ottawa, Canada, and denies wrongdoing.

His lawyers say he was in Lebanon at the time of the attack and is a victim of mistaken identity.

The trial marked the culmination of decades of investigation into one of France’s longest unsolved crimes.

French authorities accuse Diab of planting the bomb outside the synagogue where 320 worshipers had gathered to mark the end of a Jewish holiday on the evening of October 3 1980, including children celebrating their bar mitzvahs.

French investigators attributed the synagogue attack to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Special Operations but no one ever claimed responsibility.

The conviction was a surprise to many even in the court. Among the defence witnesses was a magistrate who investigated the case and testified that there was not enough evidence to convict Diab.

The head of France’s leading Jewish group, CRIF, welcomed the conviction, and urged Canada to arrest Diab.

The victims’ lawyers said the long-awaited trial will serve as a deterrent to other terrorist acts and antisemitic sentiments.

French authorities accused Diab of planting the bomb on a motorbike outside the synagogue on Rue Copernic.

Investigators initially suspected far-right extremists before shifting their focus to Palestinian militants.

Canada authorised Diab’s extradition to France in 2014 as part of the investigation, but after three years in pre-trial detention, anti-terrorism judges ordered him to be freed due to lack of evidence.

Then an appeals court ruled that he should stand trial on terrorism charges. Diab remained in Canada throughout the trial, which started earlier this month.

For those touched by the attack, the trial was a long-awaited opportunity to speak publicly about what happened.

Survivors described years of physical and mental trauma. Some said the sound of motorcycles haunted them after that night. Families of those killed mourned lost children or siblings.

Prosecutors argued that Diab has been lying to himself for 40 years and is caught up in his denial and escape from reality.

Diab’s lawyer William Bourdon had pleaded for an acquittal, saying that convicting someone would be “a judicial mistake”.

Amnesty International was among those which called for the court to drop what they called a flawed and baseless case, arguing that it “undermines effective justice for victims”.

Some lawyers for the 18 people and six groups that were party to the case acknowledged that it was hard to build a case so many years later, especially without the kind of DNA evidence or mobile phone data used in current investigations.

Tensions between police and members of New York City’s Hasidic Jewish community have flared up again after a crowded funeral procession was interrupted by officers.

Video posted on social media showed officers in protective masks chasing a minivan through Brooklyn’s Borough Park neighbourhood as it carried the body of a deceased rabbi.

The officers can be heard shouting at dozens of people marching behind the van to get out of the street and onto the pavement.

A 17-year-old boy was taken into custody and issued a summons for disorderly conduct after he was accused of pushing a police official, according to a police spokeswoman.

The confrontation came two days after Mayor Bill de Blasio stoked divisions with a series of tweets after he went to Brooklyn to oversee the dispersal of thousands of people who crowded the streets of Williamsburg for the funeral of another rabbi.

New York has banned any gatherings, of any size, for any purpose as the coronavirus has been linked to at least 18,000 deaths in the city in just a few weeks.

Mr De Blasio called the large gathering “absolutely unacceptable” in one tweet.

In another, he said: “My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed.”

Republican senator Ted Cruz has sent a letter to Attorney General Bill Barr urging the Justice Department “to closely monitor New York City” for potential religious discrimination in the wake of Mr de Blasio’s tweets.

State Senator Simcha Felder, who represents Borough Park, posted a tweet after Thursday’s confrontation saying “terrorising people by sending in armies of cops during such stressful times is not helpful at all. @NYCMayor – we need real leadership. Stop the chaos now.”

Dov Hikind, a former state assembly member who is the founder of a group fighting anti-Semitism, said people violating social distancing rules in Brooklyn are relatively small in number and are behaving in ways that goes against Judaism’s central tenant of preserving life.

He said: “I’ve begged and pleaded with the minority that exists within our community that don’t give a darn – don’t give a damn – about themselves, their families or the community.

“You can’t have funerals with hundreds of people. You can’t have people praying in synagogues. You can’t do those things when people’s lives are on the line. It violates everything in Judaism.”

Britain’s former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has called Labour opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite and said comments about Zionists he made five years ago were the most offensive by a senior UK politician in half a century.

Labour has been battling accusations of anti-Semitism for months, and Corbyn has previously apologised for what he has described as “pockets” of anti-Semitism in his party.

Sacks, who was Britain’s Chief Rabbi from 1991 to 2013, accused Corbyn of having “given support to racists, terrorists and dealers of hate who want to kill Jews and remove Israel from the map”.

He said Corbyn had depicted a group of British citizens as “essentially alien” when it was revealed last week he said in 2013 that British Zionists “don’t understand English irony” despite “having lived in this country for a very long time”.

“When he implies that, however long they have lived here, Jews are not fully British, he is using the language of classic pre-war European anti-Semitism,” Sacks told the New Statesman political magazine.

“Now, within living memory of the Holocaust, and while Jews are being murdered elsewhere in Europe for being Jews, we have an anti-Semite as the leader of the Labour party and Her Majesty’s opposition. That is why Jews feel so threatened by Mr Corbyn and those who support him.”

Labour said in a statement there is no place for anti-Semitism in their party and that they are committed to rebuilding trust with the Jewish community.

Some opinion polls put Labour ahead or level with Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives, meaning he is a potential British leader, although the next election is not due until 2022.

Sacks compared Corbyn’s comments to the infamous “Rivers of blood” speech by Enoch Powell in 1968 in which the then-Conservative shadow cabinet member warned of the dangers of immigration. His speech is widely regarded as one of the most divisive made by a modern British politician.

Labour dismissed the comparison with Powell as “absurd and offensive”.

Since unexpectedly becoming Labour leader in 2015 after decades spent on the left-wing fringes of the party, Corbyn has repeatedly faced accusations of turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic comments in the party and among groups he supports.

Corbyn has responded to protests by meeting Jewish community leaders, reassuring Jewish people they are welcome in the party.

In his 2013 speech to a meeting convened by the Palestinian Return Centre, Corbyn spoke about the importance of history and of how necessary it was for people to understand the origins of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

He said Zionists had “two problems” – firstly, that they do not study history and, secondly, they do not understand English irony.

After the emergence of footage, Labour asserted that Corbyn had been referring to a “group of pro-Israel activists” and had not been singling out Jewish people as a whole.