THE knifeman who stabbed Salman Rushdie 15 times in front of a horrifed audience in 2022 has been convicted of federal terrorism charges.<\/p>\n
Matar was accused of doing the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah\u2019s deadly dirty work by carrying out his decades-old death sentence on Rushdie.<\/p>\n
Hadi Matar, 28, was guilty of all the charges against him, including engaging in an act of transnational terrorism Credit: AP<\/p>\n
The knifeman attacked author Rushdie on stage in 2022 at a packed ampitheatre Credit: AP<\/p>\n
A jury found Hadi Matar, 28, guilty of all the charges against him, including engaging in an act of transnational terrorism.<\/p>\n
He now faces the terrifying prospect of life behind bars over the savage 2022 attack at a packed amphitheatre.<\/p>\n
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Matar is already serving a 25-year New York state prison sentence after being convicted of attempted murder over the shocking assault.<\/p>\n
The federal conviction could now see his punishment stretch to life in prison.<\/p>\n
The Indian-born British and American novelist was preparing to speak about writers\u2019 safety when Matar stormed the stage and launched his frenzied attack.<\/p>\n
The celebrated author was repeatedly slashed in front of a stunned audience, suffering devastating injuries that left him blind in his right eye.<\/p>\n
Matar\u2019s lawyers had argued there was no proof of what was going through his mind when he attacked the literary giant.<\/p>\n
Defence lawyer Nathaniel Barone claimed prosecutors had no evidence proving Matar\u2019s state of mind.<\/p>\n
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The author was slashed on stage leaving him blind in one eye Credit: Getty<\/p>\n
Matar\u2019s lawyers had argued there was no proof of what was going through his mind Credit: AP<\/p>\n
But prosecutors painted a chilling picture of an attacker allegedly obsessed with a decades-old death sentence against Rushdie.<\/p>\n
They said Matar was driven by late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini\u2019s 1989 call for Rushdie\u2019s death over his controversial novel The Satanic Verses.<\/p>\n
The attacker refused to testify during the explosive trial. <\/p>\n
Rushdie, however, took the stand and confronted the man accused of trying to kill him. <\/p>\n
He told jurors: \u201cI cant say what his ambitions or his aim was, but the wounds were dispersed across my body.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prosecutors claimed Matar had repeatedly discussed the fatwa with contacts on messaging apps in the years before the attack.<\/p>\n
Court exhibits allegedly showed him raging that Rushdie had attacked Islam and had emboldened others to insult the faith by surviving.<\/p>\n
Matar also allegedly referred to a 2006 comment by the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.<\/p>\n
Rushdie took the stand and confronted the man accused of trying to kill him Credit: AP<\/p>\n
Matar refused to testify during the explosive trial Credit: AP<\/p>\n
The US-born attacker also holds Lebanese citizenship, while Hezbollah is based in Lebanon.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said photographs found in Matar\u2019s New Jersey bedroom and on his computer showed his support for Hezbollah, which the US has designated a terrorist organisation.<\/p>\n
Assistant US Attorney Timothy Lynch told jurors in his opening statement on July 22: \u201cMatar aimed to fulfill the fatwa and wanted everyone to know he was doing this for Hezbollah.\u201d <\/p>\n
The prosecution claimed Matar\u2019s messages revealed a terrifying escalation from wanting to expose Rushdie to allegedly plotting to kill him.<\/p>\n
In a private note to himself, Matar allegedly wrote: \u201cWe need to kill him ASAP,\u201d according to Lynch.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said Matar framed the planned killing as part of what he considered a jihad, or holy war.<\/p>\n
By spring 2022, investigators calimed Matar had worked out where Rushdie lived and was tacking his public appearances. <\/p>\n
He allegedly homed in on Rushdie\u2019s scheduled appearance at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York.<\/p>\n
As Rushdie was being introduced, his attacker climbed onto the stage behind him.<\/p>\n
Matar then stabbed the author 15 times as horrified spectators gasped.<\/p>\n
Audience members and another speaker, Henry Reese, desperately scrambled to help the gravely wounded writer.<\/p>\n
Law enforcement officers assigned to the event arrested Matar after civilians managed to restrain him.<\/p>\n
Rushdie had spent years living under the shadow of a death threat after The Satanic Verses was published in 1988.<\/p>\n
The novel triggered furious protests across parts of the Muslim world over what some believers viewed as blasphemous suggestions about the Prophet Muhammad.<\/p>\n
The shocking fallout was deadly, with at least 45 people killed in riots linked to the book.<\/p>\n
A Japanese translator was stabbed to death, an Italian translator was attacked and survived, while the book\u2019s Norwegian publisher survived a shooting.<\/p>\n
Rushdie, who was born into a Muslim family, has maintained that the controversial dream sequence in the novel was simply fiction.<\/p>\n
He was forced into hiding for years before gradually returning to public life after Iran\u2019s government distanced itself from Khomeini\u2019s fatwa in 1998.<\/p>\n
Rushdie told the trial in Buffalo, New York: \u201cFor two decades or more, I led a public life without a hint of trouble.\u201d <\/p>\n
But the threat never fully disappeared.<\/p>\n
The fatwa was never rescinded, while Khomeini\u2019s successor, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, indicated in 2017 that it remained in effect.<\/p>\n
An Iranian foundation has also offered a bounty of more than $3million for Rushdie\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n
Rushdie went on to publish a memoir about the horrific attack in 2024 before returning to fiction with last year\u2019s The Eleventh Hour.<\/p>\n
The acclaimed author won Britain\u2019s prestigious Booker Prize for his 1981 novel Midnight\u2019s Children, which explored his native India.<\/p>\n
He was later knighted by the late Queen Elizabeth II and received a Dayton Literary Peace Prize lifetime achievement award in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE knifeman who stabbed Salman Rushdie 15 times in front of a horrifed audience in 2022 has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,242443],"class_list":["post-574718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-section-newsus-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}