Two-and-a-half years after becoming the victim of a stabbing attack onstage during an August 2022 appearance at upstate New York’s Chautauqua Institute, the assailant of the Mumbai-born British and American author Salman Rushdie has been found guilty of attempted murder in the second degree today (February 21).
Hadi Matar of the US state of New Jersey may receive up to 25 years in prison when he’s sentenced in a court hearing provisionally set for April 23.
Rushdie, 77, participated in the trial before Chautauqua County Judge David Foley, as part of a week of prosecution testimony from witnesses. The author lost his sight in his right eye and suffered more than a dozen stabbing and slashing wounds in the attack.
As Carolyn Thompson reports for the Associated Press, Matar—now convicted in Chautauqua—also faces trial in US District Court in Buffalo, New York, “on a separate federal indictment charging him with attempting to provide material support to the militant group Hezbollah.”
Matar is described in press reports as a dual citizen of his native United States and Lebanon. In the past, he told the New York Post that he disliked Rushdie because he had “attacked Islam.” That was the same interview in which Matar expressed surprise when told that Rushdie had survived the attack.
It took jurors less than two hours to return their guilty verdict. As Aleksandra Michalska and Jonathan Allen report for Reuters, Matar did not take the stand
