The Salman Rushdie attack case took another turn in New York on Wednesday, when Hadi Matar was convicted in federal court of providing material support to Hezbollah and engaging in transnational terrorism. Matar is already serving a 25-year prison term for trying to kill Sir Salman Rushdie in the 2022 stabbing.
Federal prosecutors said Matar backed Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed faction that the United States, Britain and other countries classify as a terrorist organization. They also told the jury that Matar was driven by a fatwa, the religious decree issued by Iran’s leader in 1989 calling for Rushdie’s death. The jury agreed with the government’s case and returned guilty verdicts on the terrorism-related counts.
At trial in Buffalo, prosecutors said Matar had been influenced by a 2006 speech from Hezbollah’s then-leader urging enforcement of the fatwa. They argued that he spent two years planning the attack. In closing arguments, Assistant US Attorney Timothy Lynch told jurors, according to The Buffalo News, that the defendant decided no one else would carry out the attack, so he had to do it himself.
Rushdie, the award-winning author at the center of the case, testified about the assault and described being stabbed 15 times. He told the court that the wounds hit his cheek, chest, eye, neck and thigh. He also said a firefighter helped save his life by giving medical care after the attack. During his testimony, Rushdie lifted the darkened lens of his glasses to show the injury to his eye, which has left him partially blinded.
The author described the scene in stark terms, telling jurors that he was lying on the stage in a large pool of blood. He said the knife came within millimetres of his brain. Prosecutors also showed videos made by Matar, who is 28, and used Rushdie’s testimony to argue that the assault was not random violence but a politically motivated attack tied to extremist rhetoric and support.
