By CAROLYN THOMPSON, Related Press
MAYVILLE, N.Y. — The person convicted of stabbing Salman Rushdie on a New York lecture stage in 2022, leaving the prizewinning creator blind in a single eye, was sentenced Friday to serve 25 years in jail.
A jury discovered Hadi Matar, 27, responsible of tried homicide and assault in February.
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Rushdie didn’t return to courtroom to the western New York courtroom for his assailant’s sentencing however submitted a sufferer influence assertion. In the course of the trial, the 77-year-old creator was the important thing witness, describing how he believed he was dying when a masked attacker plunged a knife into his head and physique greater than a dozen occasions as he was being launched on the Chautauqua Establishment to discuss author security.
Earlier than being sentenced, Matar stood and made a press release about freedom of speech during which he referred to as Rushdie a hypocrite.
“Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people,” mentioned Matar, clad in white-striped jail clothes and carrying handcuffs. “He wants to be a bully, he wants to bully other people. I don’t agree with that.”
FILE – Creator Salman Rushdie seems at a press convention on the Guide Honest in Frankfurt, Germany on Oct. 20, 2023. (AP Photograph/Michael Probst, File)
Matar obtained the utmost 25-year sentence for the tried homicide of Rushdie and 7 years for wounding a person who was on stage with him. The sentences should run concurrently as a result of each victims have been injured in the identical occasion, Chautauqua County District Legal professional Jason Schmidt mentioned.
In requesting the utmost sentence, Schmidt informed the choose that Matar “chose this. He designed this attack so that he could inflict the most amount of damage, not just upon Mr. Rushdie, but upon this community, upon the 1,400 people who were there to watch it.”
Public defender Nathaniel Barone identified that Matar had a in any other case clear legal file and disputed that the individuals within the viewers ought to be thought-about victims, suggesting {that a} sentence of 12 years can be applicable.
“Every day since then, for the last couple of years, this case has been an international publicity sponge,” Barone mentioned. “There was no presumption, ever, of innocence for Mr. Matar from the very beginning.”
Rushdie spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital and greater than three weeks at a New York Metropolis rehabilitation heart. The creator of “Midnight’s Children,” “The Moor’s Last Sigh” and “Victory City” detailed his restoration in his 2024 memoir, “Knife.”
Matar subsequent faces a federal trial on terrorism-related fees. Whereas the primary trial targeted totally on the small print of the knife assault itself, the following one is anticipated to delve into the extra difficult subject of motive.
Authorities mentioned Matar, a U.S. citizen, was making an attempt to hold out a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s dying when he traveled from his residence in Fairview, New Jersey, to focus on Rushdie on the summer time retreat about 70 miles (112.6 kilometers) southwest of Buffalo.
Matar believed the fatwa, first issued in 1989, was backed by the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and endorsed in a 2006 speech by the group’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, in line with federal prosecutors.
Iranian chief Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued the fatwa after publication of Rushdie’s novel, “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims take into account blasphemous. Rushdie spent years in hiding, however after Iran introduced it might not implement the decree he traveled freely over the previous quarter century.
Matar pleaded not responsible to a three-count indictment charging him with offering materials to terrorists, making an attempt to offer materials assist to Hezbollah and fascinating in terrorism transcending nationwide boundaries.
Video of the assault, captured by the venue’s cameras and performed at trial, present Matar approaching the seated Rushdie from behind and reaching round him to stab at his torso with a knife. Because the viewers gasps and screams, Rushdie is seen elevating his arms and rising from his seat, strolling and stumbling for just a few steps with Matar hanging on, swinging and stabbing till they each fall and are surrounded by onlookers who rush in to separate them.
Jurors in Matar’s first trial delivered their verdict after lower than two hours of deliberation.
Initially Printed: Could 16, 2025 at 8:06 AM PDT
