Rushdie attacker sentenced to 25 years in prison
A New Jersey man who stabbed and partially blinded novelist Sir Salman Rushdie on a New York lecture stage was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Friday.
Hadi Matar, 27, was convicted of attempted murder and assault earlier this year.
Sir Salman was on stage speaking before an audience in August 2022, when he was stabbed multiple times in the face and neck. The attack left him blind in one eye, with damage to his liver and a paralysed hand caused by nerve damage to his arm.
The attack came 35 years after Sir Salman’s controversial novel The Satanic Verses, which had long made him the target of death threats for its portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.
Matar received the maximum 25-year sentence for the attempted murder of Sir Salman.
He was also found guilty of assault for wounding the person who was interviewing Sir Salman, Henry Reese, and sentenced to seven years plus three years post-release for that assault.
The sentences must run concurrently because both victims were injured in the same event, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said on Friday.
Before being sentenced, Matar stood and made a statement about freedom of speech in which he called Rushdie a hypocrite, according to the Associated Press.
“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.”
Sir Salman was not in the court for his assailant’s sentencing on Friday.
Matar was convicted of attempted murder and assault in February, 2025, following an intense trial during which Sir Salman detailed the moment when he felt certain that he was going to die.
During the two-week trial, he testified that he saw a man rushing towards him while on stage at the historic arts institute in Chautauqua, New York.
He said his assailant’s eyes “were dark and seemed very ferocious”.
Sir Salman told the court he initially did not realise he had been stabbed, thinking instead that he had been punched.
Matar stabbed Sir Salman 15 times in total including to his cheek, chest, eye, neck and thigh.
Prosecutors argued that the attack was targeted.
“There were a lot of people around that day but there was only one person who was targeted,” prosecuting lawyer Jason Schmidt then told the jury.
Defence lawyer Andrew Brautigan had argued that prosecutors failed to prove Matar intended to kill Sir Salman.
Matar, who pleaded not guilty, did not testify in his defence. His lawyers did not call any witnesses of their own.
“I don’t think he’s a very good person,” Matar said about the author in a 2022 New York Post story. “He’s someone who attacked Islam.”
Matar praised Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, for calling for Sir Salman’s execution.
The attack took place some 35 years after Sir Salman’s controversial novel The Satanic Verses was published.
The novel, inspired by the life of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, sparked outrage among some Muslims, who considered its content to be blasphemous.
Sir Salman faced countless death threats and was forced into hiding for nine years after Iran’s religious leader issued a fatwa – or decree – calling for the author’s death due to the book.
But in recent years, the author said he believed the threats against him had diminished.
Just before the attack Sir Salman told a German magazine he felt his life was “relatively normal”.
The British-Indian novelist later detailed his experience and long road to recovery in a memoir called Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.
