New York, Feb 22: A New Jersey man who stabbed renowned British-Indian author Salman Rushdie multiple times on a New York lecture stage has been convicted of attempted murder and assault by a jury in New York.
Hadi Matar, 27, now faces a sentence of more than 30 years in prison, along with federal terrorism-related charges, BBC reported. The attack in August 2022 left Rushdie with severe injuries, including damage to his liver, vision loss in one eye, and a paralysed hand caused by nerve damage to his arm.
The jury’s guilty verdict on Friday came after a two-week trial in Chautauqua County Court in western New York state, near the site of the attack. The jury also found Matar guilty of assault for wounding the interviewer, Henry Reese, who was on stage with the author.
Reese suffered a minor head injury during the attack, BBC reported. Matar’s sentencing date has been scheduled for April 23. Rushdie, 77, testified that he was on stage at the historic Chautauqua Institution when he saw a man rushing towards him.
Recalling the incident, he said he was struck by the assailant’s eyes, “which were dark and seemed very ferocious”. He initially thought he had been punched, before realising he had been stabbed — 15 times in total — with wounds to his eye, cheek, neck, chest, torso and thigh.
The attack took place more than 35 years after Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, was first published. The novel, inspired by the life of the Prophet Muhammad, sparked outrage among some Muslims, who considered its content to be blasphemous.
The book was banned in some countries after it was published in 1988. Rushdie faced countless death threats and was forced into hiding for nine years after Iran’s religious leader issued a fatwa — or decree — calling for the author’s death due to the book.
But in recent years, the author said he believed the threats against him had diminished. During the trial’s closing arguments on Friday, prosecuting lawyer Jason Schmidt played a video in slow-motion of the attack, media reports said. “I want you to look at the targeted nature of the attack,” Schmidt said in court, according to a news outlet.
“There were a lot of people around that day but there was only one person who was targeted,” he told the jury. During the two-week trial, defence lawyer Andrew Brautigan argued that prosecutors had failed to prove Matar intended to kill Salman Rushdie.
Matar had pleaded not guilty. His lawyers declined to call any witnesses of their own and Matar did not testify in his defence. In an interview with the New York Post from jail in 2022, Matar praised Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, for calling for Rushdie’s execution. “I don’t think he’s a very good person,” Matar said about the author.
“He’s someone who attacked Islam.” He added that he had only read a few pages of the Satanic Verses. Matar, born in Fairview in New Jersey to parents who emigrated from Lebanon, has also been charged in a separate federal case with providing material support to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, according to an indictment unsealed in July. Hezbollah is designated a terrorist organisation by Western states, Israel, Gulf Arab countries, and the Arab League.
IANS