Man convicted in terrorism trial over the 2022 stabbing of author Salman
Rushdie
[July 30, 2026]
By JENNIFER PELTZ
A man was convicted Wednesday of federal terrorism charges in the 2022
stabbing of Salman Rushdie, the author who has faced a decades-old death
threat over his novel “The Satanic Verses.”
After just a couple of hours of deliberations, a jury found Hadi Matar
guilty of all the charges against him, including engaging in an act of
transnational terrorism.
Rushdie, who was about to speak on writers’ safety, was slashed 15 times
on an amphitheater stage in 2022. He was gravely wounded and lost the
sight in his right eye.
Prosecutors asserted that Matar was motivated by the late Iranian
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ’s 1989 call for Rushdie’s
death because of “The Satanic Verses.”
“His brutal attack on Mr. Rushdie during a peaceful speaking event is a
chilling reminder of the global reach of Iranian terrorism," Assistant
Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg said in a
statement after the verdict, adding that “justice has been done.” Iran’s
government has denied involvement in the attack.
Matar’s defense: No evidence of his state of mind
Messages seeking comment on the verdict were sent to Matar's attorneys
and Rushdie's assistant. During the trial, defense lawyer Nathaniel
Barone said the government had no proof of what was in Matar’s head.
Matar himself declined to testify. Rushdie did, telling jurors: “I can’t
say what his ambitions or his aim was, but the wounds were dispersed
across my body.”
Matar, 28, is already serving a 25-year New York state prison sentence
on an attempted murder conviction in the stabbing. His federal
sentencing is set for Nov. 3, when he faces a potential life term.
Rushdie won Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize for his 1981 novel
“Midnight’s Children,” about his native India. “The Satanic Verses,” a
novel of magical realism about the lives and dreams of two actors who
survive a plane explosion, followed in 1988.
It drew critical acclaim in the United Kingdom but engendered protests
around the Muslim world over what some believers saw as blasphemous
suggestions about Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, particularly in a dream
sequence. Over the ensuing years, at least 45 people were killed in
riots over the book, a Japanese translator was stabbed to death, and an
Italian translator and Norwegian publisher were attacked.
Rushdie, who was born into a Muslim family, has said the dream sequence
was just that. But he went into hiding for years, gradually emerging
after Iran’s government distanced itself in 1998 from Khomeini’s fatwa,
or religious edict.
“For two decades or more, I led a public life without a hint of
trouble,” Rushdie testified at the trial in Buffalo, New York.
Yet the fatwa was never rescinded; indeed, Khomenei’s successor, the
late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, indicated in 2017 that it remained in
effect. An Iranian foundation has offered a more than $3 million bounty
for killing Rushdie.
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Hadi Matar walks in to the Chautauqua County court in Mayville,
N.Y., May, 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Adrian Kraus, File)
Prosecutors: Matar’s messages showed him zeroing in on Rushdie
Matar broached the fatwa with contacts in messaging apps in 2021 and
2022, according to exhibits shown in court. The messages showed
Matar fuming that he felt Rushdie had attacked Islam and, by
surviving, emboldened others to insult the faith. Matar alluded to a
2006 comment along those lines by the late Hezbollah militant group
leader Hassan Nasrallah, the messages showed.
Born in the U.S., Matar also holds citizenship in Lebanon, where
Hezbollah is based. Prosecutors said that photos in Matar’s New
Jersey bedroom and on his computer indicated his support for
Hezbollah, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.
Matar “spent months planning and preparing to carry out what he
hoped would be the execution of Salman Rushdie,” U.S. Attorney
Michael DiGiacomo said in a statement Wednesday.
The messages showed Matar initially talked about wanting to “expose”
Rushdie, then about taking his life. In a private note to himself,
he wrote: “We need to kill him ASAP,” Assistant U.S. Attorney
Timothy Lynch said in an opening statement on July 22. The
prosecutor said Matar framed the planned killing as part of what he
considered a jihad, or holy war.
By spring 2022, the electronic chats showed, Matar wrote that he had
discerned where Rushdie lived and was tracking his public
appearances, eventually pointing out his scheduled August 2022 talk
at the Chautauqua Institution, a western New York arts and
intellectual center.
As Rushdie was being introduced, his attacker climbed on stage
behind him, then stabbed him as the audience gasped. Spectators and
another speaker, Henry Reese, scrambled to aid Rushdie. Law
enforcement officers, assigned to the event, arrested the attacker —
soon identified as Matar — after civilians restrained him.
Rushdie published a 2024 memoir about the attack, then returned to
fiction with last year’s “The Eleventh Hour.” The author, who was
knighted by Britain’s late Queen Elizabeth II, received a Dayton
Literary Peace Prize lifetime achievement award in November.
___
Associated Press writer John Wawrow contributed from Buffalo, New
York.
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