The man who stabbed acclaimed author Salman Rushdie during a live literary event has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.
On Friday (May 16), a judge in Chautauqua County, New York, handed down the maximum sentence to Hadi Matar, 27, who attacked Rushdie onstage at the Chautauqua Institution in 2022.
Matar, from Fairview, New Jersey, also received seven years for injuring moderator Ralph Henry Reese in the same incident, though the terms will be served concurrently.
The Indian-British novelist, best known for his works including Midnight’s Children, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Victory City, did not appear in court for the sentencing but submitted a victim impact statement.
During the trial, he gave emotional testimony describing how he thought he was going to die as Matar stabbed him repeatedly.
“I became aware of a great quantity of blood I was lying in,” the 77-year-old said in February, cited by The Guardian. “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.”
Matar stabbed the author 15 times in the head, neck, torso, and left hand, causing lasting injuries to his right eye, liver, and intestines.
Rushdie has since lost vision in his right eye and spent 17 days hospitalized in Pennsylvania, followed by over three weeks in a New York rehabilitation center.
He chronicled his experience in his 2024 memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.
According to AP News, prosecutors said the suspect had been inspired by a decades-old fatwa issued against Rushdie in 1989 by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, following the publication of Rushdie’s controversial novel, The Satanic Verses.
Federal prosecutors also linked Matar’s motivation to a 2006 speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, which endorsed the fatwa.
Although Matar admitted in 2022 to having read only "a couple of pages" of the book, he believed Rushdie deserved to be punished for its content.
Before being sentenced, he addressed the court. “Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people,” he said. “He wants to be a bully, he wants to bully other people. I don’t agree with that.”
Video footage played during the trial showed Matar, dressed in black and wearing a mask, approaching Rushdie from behind and stabbing him multiple times before audience members intervened.
Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt argued for the maximum sentence, telling the judge: “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.”
Defense attorney Nathaniel Barone contended that Matar had no prior criminal record and pushed for a lighter sentence, suggesting that 12 years would be more appropriate.
“Every day since then, for the last couple of years, this case has been an international publicity sponge,” Barone said. “There was no presumption, ever, of innocence for Mr. Matar from the very beginning.”
Matar still faces a separate federal trial on terrorism-related charges, including providing material support to terrorists, attempting to provide support to Hezbollah, and engaging in terrorism transcending national boundaries.
This forthcoming case is expected to explore his motivations more deeply.