The man convicted of stabbing Salman Rushdie on a New York lecture stage in 2022, leaving the prizewinning author blind in one eye, is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday. A jury found Hadi Matar, 27, guilty of attempted murder and assault in February. Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said he will request the maximum 25 years in prison for the Aug 12, 2022, attack on Rushdie and seven years for injuring a second man who was on stage with the author. The sentences must run concurrently because both victims were injured in the same event, he said. Rushdie is not expected to return to court for his assailant’s sentencing, the prosecutor said. During the trial, the 77-year-old author was the key witness, describing how he believed he was dying when a masked attacker plunged a knife into his head and body more than a dozen times as he was being introduced at the Chautauqua Institution to speak about writer safety. Rushdie spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital and more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation centre. The author of “Midnight’s Children,” “The Moor’s Last Sigh” and “Victory City” detailed his recovery in his 2024 memoir, “Knife.” Matar next faces a federal trial on terrorism-related charges. While the first trial focused mostly on the details of the knife attack itself, the next one is expected to delve into the more complicated issue of motive. Authorities said Matar, a US citizen, was attempting to carry out a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death when he travelled from his home in Fairview, New Jersey, to target Rushdie at the summer retreat about 112.6 kilometres southwest of Buffalo. Matar believed the fatwa, first issued in 1989, was backed by the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and endorsed in a 2006 speech by the group’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, according to federal prosecutors. Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued the fatwa after publication of Rushdie’s novel, “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims consider blasphemous. Rushdie spent years in hiding, but after Iran announced it would not enforce the decree he travelled freely over the past quarter century. Matar pleaded not guilty to a three-count indictment charging him with providing material to terrorists, attempting to provide material support to Hezbollah and engaging in terrorism transcending national boundaries. Video of the assault, captured by the venue’s cameras and played at trial, show Matar approaching the seated Rushdie from behind and reaching around him to stab at his torso with a knife. As the audience gasps and screams, Rushdie is seen raising his arms and rising from his seat, walking and stumbling for a few steps with Matar hanging on, swinging and stabbing until they both fall and are surrounded by onlookers who rush in to separate them.
Jurors in Matar’s first trial delivered their verdict after less than two hours of deliberation.
