Hadi Matar, the man convicted of attempted murder for the 2022 stabbing attack on author Salman Rushdie, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The sentence was handed down on Friday by a court in Chautauqua County, New York, nearly three months after Matar, 27, from New Jersey, was found guilty of second-degree attempted murder.
Rushdie, now 77, was seriously injured during the attack at a literary event in western New York. He lost sight in his right eye and suffered multiple stab wounds. During the trial, Rushdie described the harrowing moment when he feared he would die from his injuries.
In court before sentencing, Matar stated, “Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people … He wants to be a bully, he wants to bully other people. I don’t agree with that.”
Matar also received a concurrent seven-year sentence for wounding Ralph Henry Reese, a moderator who was on stage with Rushdie during the attack. Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said Matar planned the assault to cause maximum harm not only to Rushdie but also to the community and the 1,400 people attending the event.
“He designed this attack so that he could inflict the most amount of damage, not just upon Mr. Rushdie, but upon this community,” Schmidt said, explaining that the maximum sentence was justified.
Public defender Nathaniel Barone, however, noted that Matar had a clean criminal record prior to this incident and challenged the claim that the event’s audience should be considered victims. “There was no presumption, ever, of innocence for Mr. Matar from the very beginning,” Barone added.
During the trial, Rushdie was a key witness. He recounted his injuries, stating, “I became aware of a great quantity of blood I was lying in. My sense of time was quite cloudy, I was in pain from my eye and hand, and it occurred to me quite clearly I was dying.” Matar stabbed Rushdie 15 times, hitting his head, neck, torso, and left hand, causing severe damage to his right eye, liver, and intestines.
Matar’s motive was linked to a 2006 speech by then-Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who reaffirmed a fatwa issued more than 35 years ago by Iranian religious leaders calling for Rushdie’s death over his novel The Satanic Verses. Despite this, Matar admitted in 2022 that he had only read “a couple pages” of the book.
Following the attack, Rushdie detailed his recovery journey in his memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.
