Hadi Matar was convicted on Friday for the attempted murder of novelist Salman Rushdie, stemming from a stabbing incident that occurred onstage at a New York arts institute in 2022.
The 27-year-old Matar was captured on video as he charged onto the stage of the Chautauqua Institution while Rushdie was being introduced for a discussion focused on the safety of writers. These videos were presented to the jury during the three-week trial.
Rushdie, aged 77, suffered multiple stab wounds to his head, neck, torso, and left hand, resulting in the loss of vision in his right eye and significant damage to his liver and intestines. He underwent emergency surgery and faced a lengthy recovery process.
During the trial at Chautauqua County Court in Mayville, Rushdie was one of the first witnesses, recounting his experience of believing he was about to die. He demonstrated his impaired vision to the jurors by removing his specially adapted glasses, which featured a blacked-out right lens.
Matar was found guilty of second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault for stabbing Henry Reese, the co-founder of Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum, a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting exiled writers, who was co-hosting the event with Rushdie that day.
Rushdie, an atheist who was born into a Muslim Kashmiri family in India, has been the target of death threats since the release of his novel “The Satanic Verses” in 1988, which was condemned as blasphemous by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the then supreme leader of Iran.
Following the knife attack, Matar informed the New York Post that he had traveled from New Jersey after seeing the event featuring Rushdie advertised, expressing his disdain for the author, whom he accused of attacking Islam.
Matar, who holds dual citizenship in the United States and Lebanon, expressed surprise during the interview that Rushdie had survived the attack, according to the Post.
He did not take the stand during his trial. His defense team argued to the jury that the prosecution failed to establish the necessary criminal intent for a conviction of attempted murder beyond a reasonable doubt.
Read more: The WHO recommends reducing its budget after the U.S. departure.
Additionally, Matar faces federal charges from prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in western New York, alleging that he attempted to murder Rushdie as an act of terrorism and provided material support to Hezbollah, a group designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S.
Matar is scheduled to face these charges in a separate trial in Buffalo.
