Man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie on stage blinding him jailed for 25 years

The man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie on stage in 2022, leaving him blind in one eye, was sentenced on Friday to 25 years in prison.

Hadi Matar, 27, was found guilty in February of attempted murder and assault after attacking Rushdie as he was about to speak at a literary event in New York.

He received the maximum sentence, along with a separate seven-year term for injuring another man who was on stage at the time.

Rushdie did not attend the sentencing at the court in western New York but submitted a victim impact statement.

The 77-year-old author testified during the trial, telling jurors he thought he was dying as a masked man stabbed him more than a dozen times in the head and torso while he was being introduced at the Chautauqua Institution, where he was due to speak about protecting writers.

Before being sentenced, Matar stood and made a statement about freedom of speech, calling Rushdie a hypocrite.

“Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people,” Matar said, dressed in white-striped jail clothing and wearing handcuffs. “He wants to be a bully, he wants to bully other people. I don’t agree with that.”

In requesting the maximum sentence, Prosecutor Jason Schmidt told the judge that Matar: “Chose this. He designed this attack to inflict the most damage, not just on Mr Rushdie, but on this community and the 1,400 people who were there to watch it.”

Defence lawyer Nathaniel Barone argued for a 12-year sentence, noting Matar had no prior criminal record and questioning whether the audience should be considered victims.

Rushdie before the attack in 2018. / Credit: AP

“Every day since then, for the last couple of years, this case has been an international publicity sponge,” he said.

“There was no presumption, ever, of innocence for Mr Matar from the very beginning.”

Rushdie spent 17 days in a Pennsylvania hospital and more than three weeks recovering at a rehabilitation centre in New York City. He detailed his recovery in his 2024 memoir, Knife.

Matar now faces a federal trial on terrorism-related charges. While the first trial focused on the stabbing itself, the next is expected to explore his motives.

Prosecutors say Matar, a US citizen, travelled from his home in Fairview, New Jersey, to carry out a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.

The edict was issued by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 after the publication of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, which some Muslims consider blasphemous.

Though Iran later said it would no longer enforce the fatwa, and Rushdie had lived relatively freely in recent decades, Matar believed it remained valid.

Federal prosecutors say he viewed the fatwa as endorsed by Hezbollah, citing a 2006 speech by the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Matar has pleaded not guilty to charges of providing material support to terrorists, attempting to support Hezbollah, and engaging in terrorism across national borders.