Novelist Salman Rushdie promotes the German-language edition of his book Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder in Berlin on May 16, 2024. In the book, Rushdie confronts the 2022 attack that left him blind in one eye.
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Hadi Matar, the man who severely injured novelist Salman Rushdie in a 2022 stabbing attack, was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison — the maximum for attempted murder, according to The Associated Press.
Matar, 27, was convicted in February for attacking the author at the nonprofit Chautauqua Institution in New York state in August 2022. A knife-wielding Matar leapt onto the stage where Rushdie was about to give a lecture, stabbing the author multiple times in the face, neck, arm, abdomen and eye.
The assault left Rushdie, now 77, partially blind and with permanent nerve damage.
Matar was found guilty of second-degree attempted murder. He was also convicted of second-degree assault for injuring the moderator who tried to stop the attack. His sentence includes an additional 7 years for that attack, but the two are to be served concurrently, the AP said.
In Matar’s February trial, prosecutors argued that the attack against Rushdie was deliberate and targeted and that the novelist was lucky to escape with his life. The jury deliberated less than two hours before returning a verdict, according to the news agency.
Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, sparked angry protests in the Muslim world over its controversial depiction of the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Months before his death in 1989, Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a religious fatwa calling for Rushdie’s murder.
At trial, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York alleged Matar was acting on the fatwa. Matar, who lived in Fairview, N.J., at the time of the attack, has not cited the religious decree as motivation, but has said he disliked Rushdie, telling the New York Post in a jailhouse interview that the author had attacked Islam.
Rushdie himself testified at the February trial, telling the jury that the assailant struck him repeatedly.
The author recounted feeling caught off guard during the assault and then suddenly realizing that “a significant amount of blood was seeping onto my clothing.”
Matar’s legal team contended that the case was not straightforward. Attorney Lynn Schaffer conceded during the trial that “something very grave transpired,” but emphasized that the burden of proof lay with the prosecution to establish more than just that.
Matar’s Involvement in Federal Terrorism Charges
Matar is also confronting federal terrorism allegations stemming from the attack on Rushdie. Upon the filing of the charges last July, former FBI Director Christopher Wray stated that Matar “sought to execute a fatwa sanctioned by [Hezbollah] that demanded the execution of Salman Rushdie — a fatwa decreed in 1989 by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.” If found guilty of the federal offenses, including aiding terrorists and plotting the murder of a U.S. citizen, Matar could be sentenced to life imprisonment. A trial date is yet to be determined.
The acclaimed Rushdie, a dual Indian-British-American national, has authored a plethora of books. In addition to The Satanic Verses, he is known for Midnight’s Children, which unfolds in postcolonial India, and Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, a memoir recounting the assault, published just last year.
