A jury on Wednesday convicted Hadi Matar of federal terrorism charges in the 2022 stabbing of author Salman Rushdie. Matar, 28, was found guilty on all counts, including engaging in an act of transnational terrorism.
Matar's Prior Conviction and Potential Sentence
Matar is already serving a 25-year New York state prison sentence for attempted murder in the August 2022 attack. The federal conviction carries a potential life sentence. His attorney, Nathaniel Barone, had rested the defense case earlier this week without Matar taking the stand.
Details of the Attack
Rushdie was slashed 15 times on an amphitheater stage moments before he was to speak about writers' safety. He suffered severe injuries, including the loss of sight in his right eye. The moderator, Ralph Henry Reese, was also wounded. Rushdie testified in February, saying, "I became aware of a great quantity of blood I was lying in ... it occurred to me quite clearly I was dying."
Motivation and Evidence
Prosecutors alleged Matar shared propaganda videos before the attack and communicated with an Iran-based contact who claimed to know "where to find Rushdie." Matar also asked whether the fatwa against Rushdie was still active. According to a federal indictment, his motivation stemmed from a 2006 speech by Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah endorsing the decades-old fatwa from Iranian religious leaders over Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. Matar admitted to reading only "a couple pages" of the book.
Rushdie's Memoir and Recovery
In April 2024, Rushdie published a memoir titled Knife about the attack. He said at a book festival, "After I finished writing the memoir, almost immediately, it's like a door in my head opened and the stories came back." He added, "I'd been really worried that I wouldn't be able to write fiction any more ... because of trauma." Rushdie also expressed fatigue with being a symbol of free speech, saying, "I feel actual. I feel like I'm a working writer trying to make his work."
