An American-Lebanese man was found guilty by a jury on Friday of attempting to kill novelist Salman Rushdie when storming a stage and repeatedly plunging a knife into the Satanic Verses author.
Hadi Matar now faces up to 25 years in prison, and will be sentenced on April 23, a court official said in a statement confirming the conviction on attempted murder and assault charges.
Matar’s legal team had sought to prevent witnesses from characterising Rushdie as a victim of persecution following Iran’s 1989 fatwa calling for his murder over supposed blasphemy in The Satanic Verses.
Rushdie had told jurors at the trial that Matar “was stabbing and slashing” at him during the event in August 2022 at an upscale cultural centre in rural New York.
“It was a stab wound in my eye, intensely painful, after that I was screaming because of the pain,” Rushdie said, adding that he was left in a “lake of blood”.
He said it “occurred to me I was dying” before he was helicoptered to a trauma hospital.
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Iran denies involvement in Salman Rushdie attack, says writer himself to blame
Iran denies involvement in Salman Rushdie attack, says writer himself to blame