By Nehru Odeh
Hadi Matar, the 27-year-old American of Lebanese descent who brutally attacked renowned author Salman Rushdie at a cultural event in New York in 2022, has been handed a 25-year prison sentence for attempted murder and assault.
Following the sentencing on Friday, May 16, 2025, Matar now faces federal terrorism charges in the United States.
Rushdie, the Booker Prize-winning author of The Satanic Verses, suffered life-altering injuries in the stabbing, including the loss of sight in one eye and damage to several organs and nerves.
Federal prosecutors have charged Matar with three terrorism-related offences, including providing material support to terrorists and committing an act of terrorism that transcends national boundaries.
Authorities alleged he was motivated by a decades-old fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death.
“We allege that, in attempting to murder Salman Rushdie, Hadi Matar committed an act of terrorism in the name of Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organisation aligned with the Iranian regime,” said former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Iran has denied any connection to the attacker, insisting that Rushdie bore sole responsibility for the fallout over his controversial novel.
During sentencing, Matar addressed the court, expressing disdain for Rushdie and his work. “Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people,” he said. “He wants to be a bully. I don’t agree with that.”
Outside the courtroom, Matar’s defence attorney, Nathaniel Barone, was asked whether his client felt remorse. “That’s a fair question — and I can’t answer it,” he said. “People make bad decisions. Whether they regret them or not can be hard to express, for any number of reasons.”
Barone added, “I believe, if he had the opportunity to change things, he would. He wouldn’t be sitting where he is today.”
Matar, who had shouted pro-Palestinian slogans during the trial, stabbed Rushdie approximately 15 times, inflicting severe wounds to his neck, head, and torso. Another victim, event moderator Henry Reese, also sustained a stab wound.
Rushdie, now 77, testified at Matar’s state-level trial. “He was hitting me repeatedly. Hitting and slashing,” he recalled.
The attack, caught on video and played in court, showed Matar storming the stage and repeatedly stabbing the author.
Rushdie’s injuries were extensive: his Adam’s apple was lacerated, his liver and small bowel pierced, and severe nerve damage in one arm left him with permanent paralysis in one hand. He was airlifted to hospital and later rescued by audience members. Reese survived but required hospital treatment.
Although Rushdie did not attend the sentencing in person, he submitted a victim impact statement. In 2023, he published a memoir titled Knife, detailing his near-death experience. “It was a stab wound in my eye — intensely painful,” he told jurors. “After that, I was screaming because of the pain. I was left in a lake of blood.”
Intriguingly, Matar later admitted he had only read two pages of The Satanic Verses, yet believed the author had “attacked Islam.”
His defence team tried unsuccessfully to bar witnesses from portraying Rushdie as a victim of persecution linked to the 1989 Iranian fatwa, which accused the author of blasphemy and incited global outrage.
Rushdie’s publisher recently announced the upcoming release of a new short story collection, The Eleventh Hour, due out on November 4, 2025.
Born in Mumbai and raised in England, Rushdie rose to literary prominence with his 1981 novel Midnight’s Children, which won the Booker Prize for its vivid portrayal of post-independence India.
The Satanic Verses sparked global controversy and violent backlash, including the murder of his Japanese translator and the shooting of his Norwegian publisher. Rushdie lived in hiding in the UK for nearly a decade before resuming a more public life in New York.
The attack has reignited the long-running global debate over free speech, religious sensitivity, and the threats faced by artists who challenge orthodoxy.
