Salman Rushdie’s attacker Hadi Matar gets max sentence for horrific stabbing
By Emily Crane
The crazed fanatic who tried to stab Salman Rushdie to death on a New York lecture stage was sentenced Friday to the maximum term of 25 years in prison.
Hadi Matar, 26, was found guilty of attempted murder and assault in February over the horrific attack that saw him try to carry out a decades-old fatwa by ambushing the 77-year-old novelist as he was giving a lecture at the Chautauqua Institute in August 2022.
Before sentencing, the knifeman — who repeatedly shouted pro-Palestinian slogans during his trial — stood and made a statement about freedom of speech in which he called Rushdie a hypocrite.
Matar received the maximum 25-year sentence for the attempted murder of Rushdie and seven years for wounding a man who was on stage with him. The sentences must run concurrently because both victims were injured in the same event, District Attorney Jason Schmidt said.
Hadi Matar
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Hadi Matar was convicted of trying to kill Salman Rushdie when he repeatedly stabbed him during a lecture.
The sentence was handed down after a seven-day trial in which Rushdie took the stand to recount the vicious attack — even showing jurors his sightless right eye, which he keeps hidden behind a darkened lens in his eyeglasses.
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Rushdie described, too, in harrowing detail how he feared he was dying when his masked attacker plunged the knife into his head and body more than a dozen times just as he was being introduced on stage to give the lecture on writer safety.
Footage of the bloodshed played during the trial showed a knife-wielding Matar approaching from behind before stabbing him in front of the horrified audience.
Rushdie could be seen stumbling forward as Matar clung to him, swinging and stabbing until they both fell to the floor and were separated by witnesses.
Salman Rushdie
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Rushdie testified about how he thinks he would have died if not for people intervening to take Matar down. He also showed jurors his right eye, which was blinded in the attack.
AP
Matar's arrest
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Matar was trying to carry out the decades-old fatwa on Rushdie when he stabbed him in 2022..
AP
In addition to being blinded in one eye, the author suffered nerve and liver damage — all of which he barely survived.
Rushdie — who detailed his recovery in his 2024 memoir “Knife” — spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital in the aftermath of the attack, as well as more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation center.
Matar — who was born in America but also has Lebanese citizenship — still faces a federal trial on terrorism-related charges.
Authorities alleged that Matar was trying to carry out a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death when he traveled from his home in Fairview, New Jersey, to target the writer.
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Salman Rushdie
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Rushdie was in the hospital and a rehab facility for weeks after the harrowing incident.
AP
Matar believed the fatwa, first issued in 1989, was backed by the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and endorsed in a 2006 speech by the group’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, federal prosecutors charged.
He has pleaded not guilty to providing material to terrorists, attempting to provide material support to Hezbollah and engaging in terrorism transcending national boundaries.
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