A man has been found guilty of the attempted murder of author Salman Rushdie.
Hadi Matar ran onto the stage at the Chautauqua Institution in New York where Rushdie was about to speak at a lecture on 12 August, 2022, and stabbed him 15 times, as horrified audience members looked on.
The attack left the 77-year-old prizewinning British-American novelist blind in one eye.
He also suffered wounds to his eye, cheek, back, chest, torso, thigh and liver, as well as being left with a paralysed hand due to nerve damage to his arm.
Mattar was convicted after a two-week trial in Chautauqua County Court in western New York state, near where Rushdie was attacked.
Matar could receive up to 25 years in prison, which District Attorney Jason Schmidt noted is the maximum for a conviction on attempted murder in the second degree
Rushdie was the key witness during seven days of testimony, and describing in graphic detail his life-threatening injuries and long and painful recovery.
Matar, looked down but had no obvious reaction when the jury delivered the verdict.
As he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, he quietly uttered, “Free Palestine,” echoing comments he has frequently made while entering and leaving the trial.
Matar’s lawyer Nathaniel Barone said he was disappointed with verdict but was well prepared for it.
In his comments following the verdict, Schmidt said video evidence helped make the case “rock solid.”
He said: “We had a number of different angles to show the jurors. It really is as compelling as it can possibly get.
Schmidt added: “Mr Matar came into this community as a visitor. And really, it’s my job to make sure that he stays a resident of New York state for the next 25 years.”
Rushdie began his writing career in the early 70s before penning Midnight’s Children, about the Partition of India, which won the Booker Prize in 1981.
The novelist was forced into hiding for nearly 10 years after The Satanic Verses was published in 1988. Many Muslims argued that his portrayal of the Prophet Mohamed was blasphemous.
In 1989, Iran’s then leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie to be killed over the book. For many years afterwards the author remained in hiding in London under a British government protection programme.
In 1998, the Iranian government said it no longer supported the killing of Rushdie, and Sir Salman gradually returned to public life, even making a cameo as himself in the 2001 film Bridget Jones’s Diary.
However, Index on Censorship, an organisation that promotes free expression, pointed out the fatwa still stands and that money was raised to boost the reward for killing Rushdie as recently as 2016.
Rushdie was knighted in 2008 and earlier this year was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Additional reporting by AP.
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