HADI MATAR CONVICTED OF FEDERAL TERRORISM CHARGES IN SALMAN RUSHDIE STABBING

Hadi Matar was found guilty on Wednesday of federal terrorism charges for the August 2022 stabbing of author Salman Rushdie at a speaking engagement in New York. A jury in Buffalo deliberated for two hours before convicting Matar, 28, on all counts, including attempting to provide material support to Hezbollah, engaging in an act of transnational terrorism, and providing material support to terrorists. Matar already serves a 25-year state prison sentence for attempted murder related to the same attack. The federal conviction carries a potential life sentence, with sentencing scheduled for 3 November.

Rushdie suffered 15 stab wounds during the assault and lost sight in his right eye. The author was preparing to deliver a speech on writers' safety when he was attacked. Prosecutors argued that Matar was motivated by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1989 call for Rushdie's death following publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988. Rushdie testified at trial about the injuries he sustained. The defence lawyer Nathaniel Barone contended that the government lacked proof of Matar's internal motivations. Matar declined to testify in his own defence.

The Satanic Verses provoked decades of controversy in the Muslim world, with some believers viewing certain passages as blasphemous. Rushdie, born into a Muslim family, maintained the disputed dream sequence was fiction. The book's publication led to at least 45 deaths in riots, according to reports, alongside attacks on translators and the publisher. Rushdie spent years in hiding before gradually re-emerging after Iran's government appeared to distance itself from the fatwa in 1998, though Ayatollah Ali Khamenei indicated in 2017 that the edict remained in effect.