Evidence at the trial showed Matar researched the fatwa for more than a year before launching his assault on the writer at the Chautauqua event.

ByREUTERS

JULY 30, 2026 01:56

UpdatedJULY 30, 2026 04:51

The individual who stabbed and partially blinded writer Salman Rushdie during a 2022 public appearance was convicted Wednesday of federal terrorism charges tied to the incident, which prosecutors linked to longstanding death threats over his novel The Satanic Verses.

Hadi Matar, 28, already serving a 25-year state sentence for attempted murder in the knife attack, now faces a possible life term on the federal counts with sentencing set for November 3.

A federal jury in Buffalo, New York, needed only two hours to convict Matar on every charge, including attempting to provide material support to Hezbollah, engaging in terrorism that crosses national lines, and furnishing material support to terrorists.

The short trial, which opened the previous Tuesday, featured testimony from Rushdie, 79, the Booker Prize winner for Midnight's Children. The defense presented no witnesses.

Rushdie had lived under threat since the 1988 release of The Satanic Verses.

Iran's then-supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned the novel as offensive and issued a 1989 fatwa urging Muslims to kill Rushdie and others connected to its publication.

The decree triggered a large bounty and several violent incidents, among them the 1991 killing of Rushdie's Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi.

Iran stepped back from the fatwa in 1998, yet it received renewed backing in 2006 from Hezbollah's leader and again in 2017 from Khomeini's successor Ali Khamenei, according to federal prosecutors.

The assault on Rushdie was planned for over a year

Prosecutors showed Matar spent more than a year studying the fatwa before he tried to carry it out by attacking Rushdie onstage at the Chautauqua Institution in Mayville, New York, on August 12, 2022.

Rushdie, who spent his first decade under the fatwa in hiding, was stabbed more than a dozen times in the head, neck, torso and left hand. He lost vision in his right eye and sustained internal injuries. A second person was also hurt.

Attendees quickly subdued the assailant on the stage.

Matar, born in the United States and holding Lebanese citizenship, resided in Fairview, New Jersey. He was convicted of attempted murder in state court in February 2025 and received a 25-year sentence three months later.

Rushdie, born to a Muslim Kashmiri family in India and later a British and American citizen, lived under British police protection through much of the 1990s but has maintained a more public presence in New York City for over two decades.

His memoir on the stabbing, recovery and healing, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, appeared in April 2024.