American-Lebanese Man Hadi Matar, Who Attacked Author Salman Rushdie, Found Guilty Of Attempted Murder

Hadi Matar, an American-Lebanese man, was convicted of attempted murder for stabbing author Salman Rushdie in 2022.

By : ABP News Bureau | Updated at : 22 Feb 2025 07:47 AM (IST)

Author Salman Rushdie was attacked by an unknown person before giving a speech at an event in New York on August 12, 2022.
Source : PTI

A jury has convicted a New Jersey man for attempted murder in the 2022 stabbing attack on Salman Rushdie while the author was on stage at a New York arts institute, Associated Press reported.

Hadi Matar, an American-Lebanese man who attacked and blinded Indian-born British author, was convicted of attempted murder by a jury in western New York on Saturday.

Rushdie (77) was stabbed with a knife multiple times in the head, neck, torso and left hand, blinding his right eye and damaging his liver and intestines, requiring emergency surgery and months of recovery.

Matar can be seen in videos of the 2022 attack rushing the Chautauqua Institution's stage as Rushdie was being introduced to the audience for a talk about keeping writers safe from harm, some of which were shown to the jury during the seven days of testimony. The judge set sentencing for April 23. He could receive up to 25 years in prison, which District Attorney Jason Schmidt noted is the maximum for a conviction on attempted murder in the second degree, AP reported.

Matar, who stood for the verdict, looked down but had no obvious reaction when the jury delivered it. As he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, he quietly uttered, "Free Palestine," echoing comments he has frequently made while entering and leaving the trial. He also faces federal charges brought by prosecutors in the US attorney's office in western New York, accusing him of attempting to murder Rushdie as an act of terrorism and of providing material support to the armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon, which the US has designated as a terrorist organisation. 

Author Rushdie has faced death threats since the 1988 publication of his novel "The Satanic Verses," which Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader, denounced as blasphemous.

Who is Hadi Matar?

Hadi Matar is accused of stabbing renowned author Salman Rushdie on stage in New York. He hails from New Jersey and allegedly stabbed Indian-born-British author Rushdie in western New York State just before the "The Satanic Verses" author was to deliver a lecture. He was motivated to attack Rushdie by a 2006 speech in which the leader of the militant group Hezbollah endorsed a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death. After the knife assault, Matar told the New York Post that he had travelled from his home in New Jersey after seeing the Rushdie event advertised because he disliked the novelist, saying Rushdie had attacked Islam.

Published at : 22 Feb 2025 07:30 AM (IST)
Tags :
New York Salman Rushdie Hadi Matar

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