Sayed HabibHadi Matar convicted of attempted murder in 2022 attack that left author blind in one eye
By Maya Yang in New York and agencies | Fri 16 May 2025, 16:23 BST
Hadi Matar, the man convicted of attempting to murder acclaimed author Salman Rushdie, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.
On Friday, the Chautauqua County Court in New York handed down the sentence nearly three months after Matar, 27, of New Jersey, was found guilty of second-degree attempted murder for his brutal 2022 attack. The incident occurred during a literary event in western New York, where Rushdie, now 77, was speaking. The assault left the author permanently blind in his right eye and caused serious injuries to multiple organs.
During the emotional trial, Rushdie gave a harrowing testimony, recounting the moment he believed he was about to die. “I became aware of a great quantity of blood I was lying in,” he said from the witness stand in February. “My sense of time was quite cloudy. I was in pain from my eye and hand, and it occurred to me quite clearly—I was dying.”
Matar stabbed Rushdie 15 times, targeting his head, neck, torso, and left hand. The attack resulted in severe damage to Rushdie’s right eye, liver, and intestines.
In a statement delivered to the court before his sentencing, Matar showed no remorse. “Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people,” he said. “He wants to be a bully. I don’t agree with that.”
In addition to the 25-year sentence for attacking Rushdie, Matar received a concurrent seven-year sentence for injuring Ralph Henry Reese, the event moderator who was on stage at the time. According to Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt, the sentences will run concurrently, as both victims were harmed during the same attack.
Schmidt emphasized the calculated nature of the assault. “He designed this attack to inflict maximum harm—not just on Mr. Rushdie, but on the entire community, including the 1,400 people in the audience,” he said. “This was a deliberate, premeditated act, and the sentence reflects that.”
However, Matar’s public defender, Nathaniel Barone, pointed out that his client had no prior criminal record. He also challenged the prosecution's claim that the audience should be considered victims. “This case has been an international media spectacle since day one,” Barone said. “There was never a presumption of innocence for Mr. Matar.”
Matar’s motive was linked to a 2006 speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, according to a federal indictment. In that speech, Nasrallah endorsed a decades-old fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death—originally issued by Iranian religious authorities over his controversial 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. Though Matar had admitted in 2022 that he had only read “a couple of pages” of the book, he still viewed Rushdie as a legitimate target.
The attack and its aftermath were later chronicled by Rushdie himself in his memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, in which he described his long road to recovery and the enduring trauma from the event.
Rushdie, born in India and holding British and American citizenship, has faced threats to his life for more than three decades. The brutal 2022 attack marked the most serious and near-fatal incident to date.
