Man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie jailed for 25 years
16 May 2025, 15:52 | Updated: 16 May 2025, 16:13
The man who stabbed acclaimed British author Salman Rushdie, leaving him blind in one eye, has been jailed for 25 years.
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Hadi Matar was found guilty of attempted murder and assault in February.
He has now been issued the maximum 25 year sentence for the 2022 attack.
Matar was also slapped with an additional seven-year term for injuring another man.
In the trial, Mr Rushdie, 77, told jurors he feared death after the masked attacker repeatedly stabbed his face and body up to 15 times in the horrific incident.
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He told the trial in February: “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.”
The incident occurred at a live event in New York, where Mr Rushdie was speaking about writer safety. Ralph Henry Reese, the moderator, was also wounded.
Mr Rushdie was kept in hospital for 17 days and later spent three weeks at a rehabilitation facility.
The Midnight's Children author was left with permanent damage in his right eye.
Jurors also previously heard from a trauma surgeon who said Sir Salman's injuries would have been fatal without quick treatment, and a law enforcement officer who said Matar was calm and co-operative in his custody.
They were shown video of the assault and aftermath that was captured from multiple angles by Chautauqua Institution cameras.
The recordings also picked up the gasps and screams from audience members who had been seated to hear Sir Salman speak with City of Asylum Pittsburgh founder Henry Reese about keeping writers safe. Mr Reese suffered a gash to his forehead.
Matar wanted to kill the writer following a 2006 speech delivered by Hezbollah’s chief at the time, Hassan Nasrallah, a federal indictment revealed.
In the speech, Nasrallah highlighted the fatwa, or death warrant, first launched against the author by Iranian religious leaders after Mr Rushdie published his controversial book - The Satanic Verses - more than 35 years ago.
Matar said he had only read “a couple pages” of the novel, which religious critics have blasted as blasphemous.
The Booker Prize-winning author detailed his experience of being attacked in his latest book - Knife.
