In less than two hours, a New York jury reached a guilty verdict for a man from New Jersey. He was charged with attempting to murder author Salman Rushdie on a lecture stage in 2022.
Besides the attempted murder charge, the jury also found 27-year-old Hadi Matar guilty of assault. He wounded another man who was sharing the stage with Rushdie during the incident, according to The Associated Press.
The attack occurred on August 12, 2022, at the Chautauqua Institution. Matar stormed the stage as Rushdie was preparing to deliver a speech. He proceeded to stab the renowned author more than a dozen times, resulting in Rushdie losing vision in one eye.
Rushdie was the key witness during the week-long trial, detailing his life-threatening wounds and lengthy recovery.
Matar quietly mumbled, “Free Palestine,” as he was led out of the courtroom after the verdict was read. He will return to court on April 23 for sentencing and faces up to 25 years in prison.
Matar’s public defender, Nathaniel Barone, said his client was disappointed with the verdict and that he likely would have faced a lesser charge if not for Rushdie’s “notoriety.” Matar’s attorneys, who called no witnesses and their client also did not testify, argued that prosecutors did not prove Matar intended to kill Rushdie.
But District Attorney Jason Schmidt said in his closing argument that “it’s foreseeable that if you’re going to stab someone 10 or 15 times about the face and neck, it’s going to result in a fatality.”
Prosecutors played video of the incident for the jurors, captured by the institution’s in-house cameras.
Rushdie was to speak on keeping writers safe with City of Asylum Pittsburgh founder Henry Reese, who was gashed in the forehead during the attack.
Onlookers rushed in to separate Matar from Rushdie after the attack.
Rushdie was the target of an Iranian fatwa calling for his death after the publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses” in 1989. He spent years in hiding, traveling freely only after Iran announced that it would not enforce the fatwa.
Matar still faces federal terrorism-related charges that say he was motivated to attack Rushdie after Hezbollah endorced the fatwa in 2006.
