US federal jury convicts Salman Rushdie’s attacker of terrorism

A US federal jury has convicted Hadi Matar, the man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie in 2022, on terrorism charges. Prosecutors proved he acted under Iran’s influence and aided Hezbollah. Already serving 25 years for attempted murder, Matar now faces a possible life sentence without parole when sentenced in November.

New York: The man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie several times and destroyed his eye has been convicted on terrorism charges.

The jury in a federal court on Wednesday (local time) found Hadi Matar guilty of acting on Iran’s instructions and helping a terrorist organisation.

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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, ‘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 organisation.

Prosecutors introduced as evidence a photo of Matar wearing a shirt with Hezbollah writing and a propaganda video he made with speeches of 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 US 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 programme at the Chautauqua Institution, a literary and arts centre about 600 kilometres 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’.