Man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie sentenced to 25 years in prison
Hadi Matar, 27, stood quietly as the judge pronounced the sentence. He did not deny attacking Rushdie, and when he was invited to address the court before being sentenced, Matar got in a few last insults at the writer. He said he believed in freedom of speech but called Rushdie "a hypocrite".
"Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people," said Matar, clad 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."
Rushdie, 77, did not return to western New York for the sentencing but submitted a victim impact statement in which he said he has nightmares about what happened, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said. The statement was not made public. Rushdie, through his agent, declined to comment after the sentencing.
During the trial, the author described 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.
Video of the assault, captured by the venue's cameras and played at trial, show Matar approaching the seated Rushdie from behind and reaching around him to stab at his torso with a knife. As the audience gasps and screams, Rushdie is seen raising his arms and rising from his seat, walking and stumbling for a few steps with Matar hanging on, swinging and stabbing until they both fall and are surrounded by onlookers who rush in to separate them.
A jury found Matar guilty of attempted murder and assault in February after deliberating for less than two hours.
Judge David Foley told Matar that he thought it was notable he had chosen to try and kill Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institution, a summer retreat that prides itself on the free exchange of ideas.
"We all have the right to have our own ideals; we all have the right to carry them," Foley said. "But when you interfere with someone else's ability to do that by committing a violent act, in the United States of America, that has to be an answerable crime."
The judge also gave Matar a seven-year term for wounding a man who was on stage with Rushdie, though that time will run concurrently to the other sentence.
After the attack, Rushdie spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital and more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation centre. The author of Midnight's Children, The Moor's Last Sigh and Victory City detailed his recovery in his 2024 memoir, Knife.
Matar's lawyer, Nathaniel Barone, had asked the judge for a sentence of around 12 years, citing his lack of a previous criminal record.
Schmidt, the prosecutor, said Matar deserved the maximum sentence of 25 years, saying Matar "designed this attack so that he could inflict the most amount of damage, not just upon Mr. Rushdie, but upon this community, upon the 1400 people who were there to watch it."
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. He has pleaded not guilty. If convicted of the federal charges, Matar faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Authorities said Matar, a US citizen, was attempting to carry out a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie's death when he traveled from his home in Fairview, New Jersey, to target Rushdie at the summer retreat about 110km southwest of Buffalo.
Matar believed the fatwa, first issued in 1989, was backed by the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and endorsed in a 2006 speech by the group's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, according to federal prosecutors.
Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued the fatwa after publication of Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses, which some Muslims consider blasphemous. Rushdie spent years in hiding, but after Iran announced it would not enforce the decree he travelled freely over the past quarter century.
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A man who attacked Salman Rushdie with a knife in front of a stunned audience in 2022, leaving the prizewinning author blind in one eye, was sentenced this morning to 25 years in prison. Hadi Matar, 27, stood quietly as the judge pronounced the sentence. He did not deny attacking Rushdie, and when he was invited to address the court before being sentenced, Matar got in a few last insults at the writer. He said he believed in freedom of speech but called Rushdie "a hypocrite". "Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people," said Matar, clad 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." Rushdie, 77, did not return to western New York for the sentencing but submitted a victim impact statement in which he said he has nightmares about what happened, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said. The statement was not made public. Rushdie, through his agent, declined to comment after the sentencing. During the trial, the author described 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. Video of the assault, captured by the venue's cameras and played at trial, show Matar approaching the seated Rushdie from behind and reaching around him to stab at his torso with a knife. As the audience gasps and screams, Rushdie is seen raising his arms and rising from his seat, walking and stumbling for a few steps with Matar hanging on, swinging and stabbing until they both fall and are surrounded by onlookers who rush in to separate them. A jury found Matar guilty of attempted murder and assault in February after deliberating for less than two hours. Judge David Foley told Matar that he thought it was notable he had chosen to try and kill Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institution, a summer retreat that prides itself on the free exchange of ideas. "We all have the right to have our own ideals; we all have the right to carry them," Foley said. "But when you interfere with someone else's ability to do that by committing a violent act, in the United States of America, that has to be an answerable crime." The judge also gave Matar a seven-year term for wounding a man who was on stage with Rushdie, though that time will run concurrently to the other sentence. After the attack, Rushdie spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital and more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation centre. The author of Midnight's Children, The Moor's Last Sigh and Victory City detailed his recovery in his 2024 memoir, Knife. Matar's lawyer, Nathaniel Barone, had asked the judge for a sentence of around 12 years, citing his lack of a previous criminal record. Schmidt, the prosecutor, said Matar deserved the maximum sentence of 25 years, saying Matar "designed this attack so that he could inflict the most amount of damage, not just upon Mr. Rushdie, but upon this community, upon the 1400 people who were there to watch it." 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. He has pleaded not guilty. If convicted of the federal charges, Matar faces a maximum penalty of life in prison. Authorities said Matar, a US citizen, was attempting to carry out a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie's death when he traveled from his home in Fairview, New Jersey, to target Rushdie at the summer retreat about 110km southwest of Buffalo. Matar believed the fatwa, first issued in 1989, was backed by the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and endorsed in a 2006 speech by the group's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, according to federal prosecutors. Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued the fatwa after publication of Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses, which some Muslims consider blasphemous. Rushdie spent years in hiding, but after Iran announced it would not enforce the decree he travelled freely over the past quarter century.
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The British-American author did not attend the sentencing but submitted a victim impact statement. Matar also faces separate federal terrorism charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison. Video of the attack was played during the trial and showed Matar rushing the stage and plunging a knife into Rushdie. 'It was a stab wound in my eye, intensely painful, after that I was screaming because of the pain,' Rushdie told jurors, adding that he was left in a 'lake of blood.' Matar — who shouted pro-Palestinian slogans on several occasions during the trial — stabbed Rushdie about 10 times with a six-inch blade. He previously told media he had only read two pages of Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, but believed the author had 'attacked Islam'. Matar's lawyers had sought to prevent witnesses from characterising Rushdie as a victim of persecution following Iran's 1989 fatwa calling for his murder over supposed blasphemy in the novel. Iran has denied any link to the attacker and said only Rushdie was to blame for the incident. Life-threatening injuries The optical nerve of Rushdie's right eye was severed in the attack. His Adam's apple was lacerated, his liver and small bowel penetrated, and he became paralysed in one hand after suffering severe nerve damage to his arm. Rushdie was rescued from Matar by bystanders. Last year, he published a memoir called Knife in which he recounted the near-death experience. His publisher announced in March that The Eleventh Hour, a collection of short stories examining themes and places of interest to Rushdie, will be released on November 4, 2025. Rushdie, who was born in Mumbai but moved to England as a boy, was propelled into the spotlight with his second novel Midnight's Children (1981), which won Britain's prestigious Booker Prize for its portrayal of post-independence India. But The Satanic Verses brought him far greater, mostly unwelcome, attention. Rushdie became the centre of a fierce tug-of-war between free speech advocates and those who insisted that insulting religion, particularly Islam, was unacceptable under any circumstance. Books and bookshops were torched, his Japanese translator was murdered and his Norwegian publisher was shot several times. Rushdie lived in seclusion in London for a decade after the 1989 fatwa, but for the past 20 years — until the attack — he lived relatively normally in New York.
