Hadi Matar convicted of Hezbollah support in Salman Rushdie stabbing case
Hadi Matar, already serving 25 years for the 2022 attack on Sir Salman Rushdie, has been convicted in federal court of supporting Hezbollah and transnational terrorism.
Federal jury finds Rushdie attacker guilty of terrorism charges
Hadi Matar, who is already serving a 25-year state prison sentence for the stabbing of Sir Salman Rushdie, has been convicted on additional federal charges — including providing material support to Hezbollah. BBC.co.uk reports that the verdict was returned by a jury in a federal court in Buffalo, New York, on Wednesday.
The jury found Matar, 28, guilty of engaging in an act of transnational terrorism and of furnishing assistance to Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed faction designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States, the United Kingdom, and numerous other countries.
Prosecutors argued during the trial that Matar had been driven by a fatwa — a religious edict calling for Sir Salman's death — issued by Iran's religious leader in 1989. They also pointed to a 2006 speech by the then-leader of Hezbollah, in which he called for that edict to be carried out, contending that Matar had spent two years planning the assault.
"The defendant decided no one was going to do it, so he had to do it," Assistant US Attorney Timothy Lynch said in his closing statement, according to The Buffalo News. "The defendant is the one who answered that call."
Sir Salman testified during the trial, describing in detail the moment he was stabbed 15 times on stage at the Chautauqua Institution in New York in August 2022. The wounds struck his cheek, chest, eye, neck and thigh.
"I was on the stage, lying down, with an enormous pool of blood all around me," he told the court. "It was an enormous and expansive lake of blood."
He also removed the darkened lens from his glasses to show the injury to his eye, which has left him partially blind, stating that the blade had come "within millimetres from my brain." He credited a firefighter at the scene with saving his life by providing immediate medical care.
Defence attorneys challenged the terrorism framing of the attack, arguing that Matar's actions had not been ideologically motivated. They also questioned Sir Salman about whether his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses — which sparked widespread outrage among some Muslims who considered it blasphemous — had invited a violent response.
"I don't believe the book is on trial," Sir Salman replied. "Somebody else is on trial."
The British-Indian author had lived under the shadow of the 1989 fatwa for years, spending nine years in hiding under police protection. He later wrote about the attack and his recovery in a memoir titled Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. Last year, he published his first work of fiction since the stabbing, titled The Eleventh Hour.
Matar was convicted of attempted murder by a New York state court in 2025 and is currently serving a 25-year sentence for that offence. The federal conviction carries the possibility of a life sentence.
Source: The Sun