Man Convicted of Attempted Murder for Stabbing Novelist Salman Rushdie

MAYVILLE, New York—Hadi Matar, the individual who attacked and partially blinded novelist Salman Rushdie during an event at a New York arts institute, was convicted on Friday of attempted murder.

Matar, 27, was seen in video footage from the 2022 incident rushing onto the stage of the Chautauqua Institution as Rushdie was being introduced for a discussion focused on protecting writers from danger. This footage was presented to the jury throughout the seven days of testimony.

Rushdie, 77, suffered multiple stab wounds to his head, neck, torso, and left hand, resulting in the loss of vision in his right eye as well as damage to his liver and intestines, necessitating emergency surgery and an extensive recovery period.

The author was one of the first witnesses to testify at the Chautauqua County Court in Mayville, calmly recounting to the jurors his belief that he was facing death, while demonstrating his blinded eye by removing his adapted glasses with a darkened right lens.

Matar was convicted of second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault for stabbing Henry Reese, co-founder of Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum, a nonprofit that supports exiled writers, who was moderating the discussion with Rushdie that day.

He is scheduled for sentencing on April 23 and could face up to 25 years in prison.

Following the verdict, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt commended the many audience members who came to Rushdie’s assistance during the attack.

“The Chautauqua Institution community, who I believe saved Mr. Rushdie’s life by intervening, deserves swift justice, and I am pleased that we could deliver that for them,” Schmidt stated.

Nathaniel Barone, a public defender representing Matar, expressed his client’s disappointment with the conviction.

“The video was significantly damaging for Mr. Matar,” Barone commented outside the courtroom, referring to the video evidence of the attack that was shown to jurors multiple times, including in slow motion. “It’s an old saying, but a picture is worth a thousand words.”

Rushdie, an atheist who was born into a Muslim Kashmiri family in India, has lived under death threats since publishing his book “The Satanic Verses” in 1988, which was denounced as blasphemous by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Following the knife attack, Matar shared with the New York Post that he had traveled from his New Jersey home after seeing an advertisement for the Rushdie event because of his disdain for the novelist, claiming Rushdie had criticized Islam.

Matar, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Lebanon, said in the interview that he was surprised Rushdie had lived through the assault, according to the Post.

He did not provide testimony during his trial. Matar’s defense contended that the prosecution failed to establish beyond a reasonable doubt the intent necessary to support a charge of attempted murder, arguing that Matar should have been charged only with assault.

Furthermore, Matar faces federal charges from the U.S. attorney’s office in western New York for allegedly attempting to murder Rushdie as an act of terrorism and for providing material support to Hezbollah, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization.

He is set to face those charges in a separate trial in Buffalo.

By Aleksandra Michalska and Jonathan Allen