Hadi Matar: Man who stabbed prizewinning author Salman Rushdie faces sentencing

The man convicted of stabbing Salman Rushdie on a New York lecture stage, leaving the prizewinning author blind in one eye, is scheduled to be sentenced.

A jury in February found Hadi Matar, 27, guilty of attempted murder and assault.

Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said he will request the maximum 25 years in prison for the August 12, 2022, attack on Rushdie and seven years for injuring a second man who was on stage with the author.

The sentences must run concurrently because both victims were injured in the same event, he said.

Rushdie is not expected to return to court for his assailant’s sentencing, the prosecutor said.

During the trial, the 77-year-old author was the key witness, describing how he believed he was dying when a masked attacker plunged a knife into his head and body more than a dozen times as he was being introduced at the Chautauqua Institution to speak about writer safety.

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

Matar next faces a federal trial on terrorism-related charges. While the first trial focused mostly on the details of the knife attack itself, the next one is expected to delve into the more complicated issue of motive.

Authorities said Matar, a US citizen, was attempting to carry out a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death when he travelled from his home in Fairview, New Jersey, to target Rushdie at the summer retreat about 110km southwest of Buffalo.

Matar pleaded not guilty to a three-count indictment charging him with providing material to terrorists, attempting to provide material support to Hezbollah and engaging in terrorism transcending national boundaries.

Jurors in Matar’s first trial delivered their verdict after less than two hours of deliberation.