A jury in western New York has found a New Jersey man guilty of attempted murder in the stabbing of author Salman Rushdie, which left him partially blind.
The conviction of the man, Hadi Matar (27), followed harrowing testimony from Rushdie (77), who told jurors he had been struck by his attacker’s dark, ferocious eyes. He testified that at first he believed he was being punched, but then he realised he had “a very large quantity of blood pouring out” onto his clothes.
Rushdie had been scheduled to deliver a talk at the Chautauqua Institution amphitheater in western New York state in August 2022 about how the United States has been an asylum for writers and other artists-in-exile.
Shortly before his talk was set to begin, a man wearing dark clothing and a face mask rushed onto the stage and began stabbing Rushdie. Ralph Henry Reese, one of the founders of a project that offers refuge for writers, was onstage with Rushdie and was also injured in the attack.
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Matar was also found guilty of assault regarding the injuries to Reese.
The district attorney, Jason Schmidt, played a slow-motion video of the attack for the jury on Friday morning, pointing out the assailant as he emerged from the audience, walked up a staircase to the stage and broke into a run towards Rushdie.
The attack occurred more than 30 years after Rushdie, an Indian-born British American novelist, was first placed under a “fatwa” by Iranian religious leaders angry at his depiction of Islam in his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.
The assistant public defender Andrew Brautigan told the jury that prosecutors had not proved that Matar intended to kill Rushdie. The distinction is important for an attempted-murder conviction. The defendant pleaded not guilty.
A separate federal indictment alleges that Matar, of Fairview, New Jersey, was motivated to attack Rushdie by a 2006 speech in which the leader of the Iran-backed Hizbullah endorsed the decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.
Rushdie spent years in hiding. But after Iran announced that it would not enforce the decree, he had travelled freely for decades. A trial on the federal terrorism-related charges will take place in US district court in Buffalo.
Sentencing is set for April 23rd. Matar faces up to 32 years in prison. – The New York Times/Guardian
