10 hours ago
Last Updated:May 16, 2025, 21:09 IST
A man named Hadi Matar attempted to murder British-American author Salman Rushdie in August 2022 by stabbing him in his right eye. He was sentenced to 25 years in jail.
Salman Rushdie's attacker imprisoned for 25 years (AP Image)
The man who was convicted of attempting to murder author Salman Rushdie on a stage was sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment in New York on Friday.
A New York jury took less than two hours to convict the attacker, identified as Hadi Matar, of second-degree attempted murder in February this year.
Rushdie, the British-American celebrated author, was blinded in one eye in the knife attack in August 2022. Matar was also found guilty of assault for hurting another man who was on stage with the writer.
Rushdie did not go back to the Chautauqua County courtroom in western New York for Matar’s sentencing, however, he did send in a statement describing how the attack affected his life.
The author was stabbed and cut on his head, eye, neck, chest, leg, and hand, after which he was admitted to the hospital for 17 days. Thereafter, he spent over three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation center.
The Booker Prize-winning novelist was on the stage and was about to speak before an audience at the Chautauqua Institution in New York when the attacker rushed towards him and launched the attack, slashing him over a dozen times.
Ahead of his sentencing, Matar made a statement in the courtroom about freedom of speech, labelling Rushdie as a “hypocrite".
District Attorney Jason Schmidt said that Matar designed the attack aiming to inflict the most amount of damage, “not just upon Mr. Rushdie, but upon this community, upon the 1,400 people who were there to watch it".
On the second day of the trial, the victim, Rushdie, confronted Matar for the first time as he described to the jury the horrific moments of the attack. He confessed to the court that he started believing he was going to die.
“I became aware of a great quantity of blood I was lying in. 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," he testified in the courtroom.
Jurors were also shown the video footage of the fatal attack during the trial.
The well-known author, who was born in India, has received death threats ever since his 1988 novel ‘The Satanic Verses’ was called blasphemous by Iran’s then-supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Location :New York, United States of America (USA)
First Published:News world Man Who Blinded Salman Rushdie's Right Eye In Knife Attack Sentenced To 25-Year Jail In New York
