The individual responsible for the attempted murder of Salman Rushdie has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.
On Friday, the Chatouka County Court handed down this sentence to 27-year-old Hadi Matar from New Jersey, nearly three months after he was found guilty of second-degree attempted murder.
Matar’s conviction followed a rigorous trial, which saw 77-year-old Rushdie testify about the moment he feared for his life during an attack at a literary event in western New York in 2022.
From the witness stand in February, Rushdie recounted, “I noticed a lot of blood around. My sense of time was very unclear. I was in pain from my eyes and hands.” Matar ultimately stabbed Rushdie 15 times, inflicting severe injuries to his right eye, liver, and intestines, as well as wounds to his head, neck, torso, and left hand.
As a result of the assault, Rushdie now faces permanent damage to his right eye. The attack also injured Ralph Henry Reese, the moderator of Rushdie’s lecture.
Matar’s motivations, as noted in federal charges, can be traced back to a 2006 speech by then-Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. In this address, Nasrallah expressed support for a fatwa, a death warrant issued against Rushdie over 35 years ago due to his novel “The Satanic Verses.”
In the wake of the attack, Matar acknowledged in 2022 that he had read only “a few pages” of the controversial book that Iranian religious leaders deemed blasphemous.
The Indian-born British-American author later shared his experiences and long path to recovery in a memoir titled “Victory,” following the attempted murder.
