The man who stabbed Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie multiple times on a New York lecture stage has been convicted of attempted murder and assault.
Arab-American Hadi Matar, 27, from New Jersey, now faces a sentence of more than 30 years in prison for the stabbing.
The attack, which occurred in August 2022, left Salman Rushdie with severe injuries including damage to his liver, vision loss in one eye and a paralysed hand caused by nerve damage to his arm.
The jury’s guilty verdict on Friday came after a two-week trial in Chautauqua County Court in western New York state, close to the site of the attack.
The jury also found Mr Matar guilty of assault for wounding the interviewer, Henry Reese, who was on stage with the author. Mr Reese suffered a minor head injury during the attack.
Matar’s sentencing date has been scheduled for April 23, 2025.
Rushdie, 77, testified that he was on stage at the historic Chautauqua Institute when he saw a man rushing towards him.
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Recalling the incident at an earlier session, Rushdie told jurors: “I was aware of this person rushing at me on my right-hand side,” he said, recounting how he was about to speak at an arts event in New York State.
“I only saw him at the last minute .. It was a stab wound in my eye, intensely painful, after that, I was screaming because of the pain.”
Rushdie said he initially thought he had been punched, before realising he had been stabbed – 15 times in total – with wounds to his eye, cheek, neck, chest, torso and thigh.
The attack took place more than 35 years after Salman’s controversial novel, The Satanic Verses, was first published.
The novel, considered blasphemous by Muslims, was inspired by the life of the Prophet Muhammad PBUH, sparked Ummah wide outrage.
Muslims across the globe considered its content to be deeply hurtful and offensive. The book was banned in many countries after it was published in 1988.
Rushdie faced countless death threats and was forced into hiding for nine years after Iran’s religious leader at the time, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for the author’s death.
Prior to the attack, the author had been quoted as saying he believed the threats against him had diminished.
During the two-week trial, defence lawyer Andrew Brautigan argued that prosecutors had failed to prove Matar intended to kill Rushdie. Matar had pleaded not guilty.
His lawyers declined to call any witnesses of their own and Matar did not testify in his defence.
In an interview with the New York Post from jail in 2022, Matar praised Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, for calling for Rushdie’s execution.
“I don’t think he’s a very good person,” Mr Matar said about the author. “He’s someone who attacked Islam.”
Matar, born in Fairview in New Jersey to parents who emigrated from Lebanon, has also been charged in a separate federal case with providing material support to the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, according to an indictment unsealed in July.
Hezbollah is designated a terrorist organisation by Western states, Israel, Gulf Arab countries and the Arab League.
Throughout the trial, Matar, who is from Fairview, New Jersey, was often seen taking notes and speaking with his attorneys.
On several occasions while being brought in or out of the courtroom, he would shout: “Free Palestine” to news cameras.
During the trial’s closing arguments on Friday, prosecuting lawyer Jason Schmidt played a video in slow-motion of the attack, the Associated Press reports.
“I want you to look at the targeted nature of the attack,” Mr Schmidt said in court, according to the news outlet. “There were a lot of people around that day but there was only one person who was targeted,” he told the jury.
