Salman Rushdie's assailant sentenced to 25 years in prison

MAYVILLE, N.Y.,— The man convicted of stabbing author Salman Rushdie — the Indian-born novelist who spent years in hiding after Iran urged Muslims to kill him because of his writing — during a public event in 2022 was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison, prosecutors said.

Hadi Matar, 27, a U.S. citizen from Fairview, New Jersey, was found guilty earlier this year in Chautauqua County Court for the attempted murder of Rushdie, 77, and the assault of another man during the same incident.

The attack occurred onstage at the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York as Rushdie was about to participate in a lecture on protecting writers from threats. A video presented during trial showed Matar running toward Rushdie and repeatedly stabbing him before being subdued.

District Attorney Jason Schmidt announced that Matar received the maximum sentence for second-degree attempted murder and an additional seven-year sentence for assaulting Henry Reese, co-founder of Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum. Both sentences will be served at the same time.

Reese, who was set to moderate the talk with Rushdie, suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the attack.

Rushdie, an India-born author from a Muslim Kashmiri background, suffered multiple stab wounds to his face, neck, chest, and hand. He was left blind in his right eye and underwent emergency surgery.

“This was a devastating act, especially for someone who was beginning to re-enter public life after years of threats,” Schmidt told reporters following the sentencing.

Rushdie has been the target of threats since the 1988 publication of “The Satanic Verses“, a novel that led Iran’s then-leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa calling for his death, citing blasphemy.

Matar declined to testify during the trial. His attorney, Nathaniel Barone, said prosecutors did not prove intent to kill and argued for a lesser charge. Barone said his client plans to appeal.

Federal authorities have also charged Matar with attempting to kill Rushdie as an act of terrorism. Those charges, filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Western New York, include accusations of providing support to Hezbollah, a group labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

Matar is scheduled to face those federal charges in a separate trial in Buffalo.

(With files from Reuters)