A New Jersey man was convicted on Friday of attempted murder for stabbing author Salman Rushdie multiple times on a New York lecture stage in 2022.
Jurors, who deliberated for less than two hours, also found Hadi Matar, 27, guilty of assault for wounding a man who was on stage with Rushdie at the time.
Matar ran onto the stage at the Chautauqua Institution where Rushdie was about to speak on Aug. 12, 2022, and stabbed him more than a dozen times before a live audience. The attack left the 77-year-old prize-winning novelist blind in one eye.
Rushdie was the key witness during seven days of testimony, describing in graphic detail his life-threatening injuries and long, painful recovery.
Matar, sitting at the defence table, looked down but had no obvious reaction when the jury delivered the verdict.
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.
The judge set sentencing for April 23. Matar 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.
Matar was disappointed, said his public defender, Nathaniel Barone. “But I thought, quite frankly, that he was well prepared for the verdict, regardless of what it was.”
In his comments following the verdict, Schmidt said video evidence helped make the case “rock solid.”
“We had a number of different angles to show the jurors,” he said. “It really is as compelling as it can possibly get.”
Schmidt added: “Mr. Matar came into this community as a visitor. And really, it’s my job to make sure that he stays a resident of New York state for the next 25 years.”
During his closing argument, Schmidt played a slow-motion video of the attack for the jury, pointing out the assailant as he emerged from the audience, walked up a staircase to the stage and broke into a run toward Rushdie.
“I want you to look at the unprovoked nature of this attack,” Schmidt said. “I want you to look at the targeted nature of the attack. There were a lot of people around that day, but there was only one person who was targeted.”
Assistant public defender Andrew Brautigan told the jury that prosecutors have not proved that Matar intended to kill Rushdie. The distinction is important for an attempted-murder conviction.
Matar had with him knives, not a gun or bomb, his lawyers have said previously. And in response to testimony that the injuries were life-threatening, they have noted that Rushdie’s heart and lungs were uninjured.
Schmidt said while it’s not possible to read Matar’s mind, “it’s foreseeable that if you’re going to stab someone 10 or 15 times about the face and neck, it’s going to result in a fatality.”
Stabbed and slashed more than a dozen times
Rushdie was the key witness during testimony that began last week. The Booker Prize-winning author told jurors he thought he was dying when a masked stranger ran onto the stage and stabbed and slashed at him until being tackled by bystanders.
Rushdie showed jurors his now-blinded right eye, usually hidden behind a darkened eyeglass lens.
After a violent knife attack in 2022, author Salman Rushdie says learning to live with ‘that shadow’ of death has helped him to appreciate the ridiculous things in life.
Schmidt reminded jurors about the testimony of a trauma surgeon, who said Rushdie’s injuries would have been fatal without quick treatment.
He also slowed down video showing Matar approaching the seated Rushdie from behind and reaching around him to stab at his torso with a knife. Rushdie raises his arms and rises 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.
Rushdie is seen flailing on the ground, waving a hand covered in bright red blood. Schmidt freezes on a frame showing Rushdie, his face also bloodied, as he’s surrounded by people. “We’ve shown you intent,” Schmidt said.
The recordings also picked up the gasps and screams from audience members who had been seated to hear Rushdie speak with Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum founder Henry Reese about keeping writers safe.
Reese suffered a gash to his forehead, leading to the assault charge against Matar.
From the witness stand, institution staff and others who were present on the day of the attack pointed to Matar as the assailant.
Stabbed and slashed more than a dozen times in the head, throat, torso, thigh and hand, Rushdie spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital and more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation centre. He detailed his long and painful recovery in his 2024 memoir, Knife.
Throughout the trial, Matar often took notes with a pen and sometimes laughed or smiled with his defence team during breaks in testimony. His lawyers declined to call any witnesses of their own, and Matar did not testify in his defence.
Barone, Matar’s public defender, said his client likely would have faced a lesser charge of assault were it not for Rushdie’s celebrity.
“Unfortunately, the notoriety of Mr. Rushdie certainly didn’t help in how this case may have been presented,” he said. “And we believe that it was overcharged.”
A separate federal indictment alleges that Matar, of Fairview, New N.J., 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.
Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued the fatwa in 1989 after publication of the novel The Satanic Verses, which some Muslims consider blasphemous.
Rushdie spent years in hiding. But after Iran announced that it would not enforce the decree, he had travelled freely over the past quarter-century.
A trial on the federal terrorism-related charges will be scheduled in U.S. District Court in Buffalo, N.Y.
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