Hadi Matar is looking at a maximum jail term of 25 years
A jury in Mayville, New York has found New Jersey resident Hadi Matar, who attacked author Salman Rushdie in 2022, guilty of attempted murder in the second degree, reported Reuters.
Matar was also found guilty of assault in the second degree for stabbing Henry Reese, Pittsburgh's City of Asylum co-founder, on Friday. Matar is looking at a maximum jail term of 25 years; he will receive his sentence on April 23.
“The Chautauqua Institution community, which I believe saved Mr. Rushdie's life when they intervened, I would say to you that this entire community deserved swift justice here, and I'm glad that we were able to achieve that for them,” Jason Schmidt, Chautauqua County district attorney, said in a statement published by Reuters.
Matar was captured on video charging the stage at the Chautauqua Institution during Rushdie’s introduction as a speaker in a talk about protecting writers from harm. The author took several stabs to the head, neck, torso and left hand. Reese, who was giving the talk alongside Rushdie, was stabbed as well.
Rushdie’s right eye was blinded, and he suffered damage to his liver and intestines that necessitated emergency surgery. He revealed his eye injury at the trial in Chautauqua County Court and described his belief that he was going to die.
Public defender Nathaniel Barone, who defended Matar, said in a statement published by Reuters that the video footage was “extremely damaging to Mr. Matar.”
“It's that old expression, a picture is worth a thousand words,” Barone said, adding that his client, who did not testify, was disappointed in the verdict.
Matar’s defense team argued that prosecutors failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Matar displayed the necessary criminal intent to kill that would result in an attempted murder conviction. They said that he should have charged with assault.
Matar reportedly told the New York Post in August 2022 that he attended the Chautauqua Institution after he saw Rushdie advertised for it. He claimed that he disliked the author for his perceived attack on Islam. In the same interview conducted after the attack, Matar expressed his surprise that Rushdie survived.
Rushdie’s 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses” was denounced by then-Iran supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as blasphemous.
Matar is set to face other charges at another Buffalo trial; prosecutors in the US attorney's office in western New York claimed that his attempted murder of Rushdie was a terrorist act. Matar was also accused of materially supporting the Lebanon-based armed group Hezbollah, which the US has designated a terrorist organization.
