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Author Salman Rushdie’s attacker convicted on federal terrorism charges
The jury in a federal court on July 29 found Hadi Matar guilty of acting on Iran's instructions
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IANS - Thu, 30, Jul 2026
- 00:19 EDT
- 19
Salman Rushdie’s attacker faces trial on terrorism charge (Photo: IANS) Caption : Salman Rushdie’s attacker faces trial on terrorism charge / Photo: IANS
The man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie several times and destroyed one of his eyes has been convicted on terrorism charges.
The jury in a federal court on July 29 found Hadi Matar guilty of acting on Iran's instructions and helping a terrorist organization.
Matar attacked Rushdie in an attempt to carry out the fatwa issued by the late Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 demanding Rushdie's death because the Islamic clerics considered his novel, The Satanic Verses, blasphemous.
The jury also agreed with the prosecutors, who linked the Lebanese American to the Lebanon-based, Iran-aligned group Hezbollah for the charge of aiding a terrorist organization.
Prosecutors introduced as evidence a photo of Matar wearing a shirt with Hezbollah writing and a propaganda video he made with speeches by Khomeini and a Hezbollah leader.
Matar, 28, was convicted last year in a New York state court of attempting to murder Rushdie and is serving a 25-year prison sentence.
In the U.S. legal system, a person can be tried in state or local courts under their laws and also in federal courts under federal laws over the same incident.
When he is sentenced in November at the federal court in Buffalo, Matar could get a life sentence without parole.
Matar's lawyer, Nathaniel Barone, did not deny that he had attacked Rushdie but said that he had acted independently and not in coordination with Iran or Hezbollah.
He was enraged by what he considered Rushdie's blasphemy, the lawyer said.
After the fatwa was issued, Rushdie, a Booker Prize winner, went underground with British government protection.
He later emerged in public and lives in New York City, where he is a professor at a university.
Rushdie, 79, was participating in a literary program at the Chautauqua Institution, a literary and arts center about 600 kilometers from the city, and, ironically, was to speak on the protection of writers when he was attacked.
He testified during the trial that he found himself in "an enormous and expansive lake of blood" after the attack.
Besides destroying his left eye, the stabbings damaged his left hand and injured his liver, Rushdie said.
He has written a book about the incident, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.
Discover more at New India Abroad.
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