A man has been found guilty of attempted murder for attacking author Sir Salman Rushdie.
The 77-year-old British-American writer was stabbed multiple times as he was preparing to give a speech in New York in 2022.
He was blinded in his right eye in the incident, suffered a severely damaged hand, and spent months recovering.
Following a trial in Chautauqua County Court, a jury convicted 27-year-old Hadi Matar of attempting to murder Sir Salman, after less than two hours of deliberations.
He was also found guilty of assault for wounding Henry Reese, who was on stage with Sir Salman at the time.
Matar gave no obvious reaction to the verdict, and quietly muttered “free Palestine” as he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs.
Hadi Matar was found guilty by a jury after less than two hours of deliberations. Pic: AP
The court heard Matar ran on to the stage at the Chautauqua Institution where the author was about to speak on 12 August 2022, and stabbed him in front of an audience.
The Indian-born writer, who spent most of the 1990s in hiding in the UK after receiving death threats over his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, was stabbed about 15 times.
Sir Salman was attacked in the head, neck, torso, and left hand. He also suffered damage to his liver and intestines.
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From 2024: Salman Rushdie recalls stabbing
‘I was dying’
During the trial, Sir Salman described the moment Matar attacked him and told the court: “I only saw him at the last minute.
“I was aware of someone wearing black clothes, or dark clothes and a black face mask. I was very struck by his eyes, which were dark and seemed very ferocious to me.
“I thought he was hitting me with his fist but I saw a large quantity of blood pouring onto my clothes.
“He was hitting me repeatedly. Hitting and slashing.”
The writer then said he felt “a sense of great pain and shock,” and added: “It occurred to me that I was dying. That was my predominant thought.”
The court also heard that Mr Reese, the co-founder of Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum, had suffered a gash to his forehead in the attack.
‘Attack was unprovoked’
During closing arguments earlier on Friday, District Attorney Jason Schmidt showed the jury a video of the attack and said: “I want you to look at the unprovoked nature of this attack.
“I want you to look at the targeted nature of the attack. There were a lot of people around that day but there was only one person who was targeted.”
Matar’s defence team argued prosecutors did not prove he intended to kill the writer, with Andrew Brautigan telling the jury: “You will agree something bad happened to Mr Rushdie, but you don’t know what Mr Matar’s conscious objective was.”
Mr Schmidt said that while it was not possible to read Matar’s mind, “it’s foreseeable that if you’re going to stab someone 10 or 15 times about the face and neck, it’s going to result in a fatality”.
The judge set a sentencing date of 23 April, when Matar could be jailed for up to 25 years.
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Matar faces a separate, federal indictment from prosecutors in the US attorney’s office in western New York alleging that he attempted to murder Sir Salman as an act of terrorism.
He is also accused of providing material support to the armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon, which the US has designated as a terrorist organisation.
