Salman Rushdie’s Attacker Hadi Matar Found Guilty

The New Jersey man accused of stabbing author Salman Rushdie onstage in 2022, seriously wounding him and leaving him thinking he was dying at that moment, has been found guilty of attempted murder and assault, per NBC News, the BBC and CNN.

After deliberating for about two hours on Friday, Feb. 21, a jury handed down the guilty for Hadi Matar, 27, who was accused of attacking The Satanic Verses author, 77, in Aug. 2022, just before he was about to speak at a literary festival in New York state. Matar is facing up to 30 years in prison.

Rushdie was hospitalized for 17 days after that attack, which left him permanently blind in his right eye and unable to use his right hand.

The shocking crime took place at the historic Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, in western New York, where Matar allegedly stormed the stage and began stabbing Rushdie in the neck, chest and abdomen, New York State Police said.

Rushdie testified on Tuesday, Feb. 11, saying he had just sat down on stage when “this assault began,” The Guardian reports.

“I was aware of this person rushing at me from my righthand side,” he said. “I was struck by his eyes which seemed dark and ferocious to me.”

The author said he believed he had been struck about 50 times, leaving him in what he described as a “lake of blood,” France24 reports.

“Everything happened very quickly. I was stabbed repeatedly, and most painfully in my eye,” said Rushdie, per The Guardian. “I struggled to get away. I held up my hand in self-defense and was stabbed through that.”

He added, “It occurred to me that I was dying,” the Associated Press reports. “That was my predominant thought.”

The interviewer, Henry Reese, also sustained injuries in the attack. 

The trial began on Monday, Feb. 10, in Mayville, with district attorney Jason Schmidt telling jurors how the alleged attack unfolded in front of about 1,000 people, local station KPVI reports.

A masked young man “appeared from the rear of the theater” and started rushing the stage, said Schmidt, before he “forcefully and efficiently and with speed plunged the knife into Mr. Rushdie over and over again.”

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Rushdie has received death threats ever since 1989, starting with the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, which was declared by some as blasphemous.

Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa for Muslims around the world to assassinate him, leading the author to go into hiding until 1998, when the Iranian government called off the order to kill him.

Rushdie eventually moved to New York and became an advocate for free speech. He wrote about the attack in his 2024 book, Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder.