Salman Rushdie attacker, Hadi Matar, sentenced to 25 years

Hadi Matar, the 27-year-old fanatic who viciously attacked author Salman Rushdie three years ago, leaving the author blind in one eye, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison. He had been held guilty in February by a jury in a trial that went on for two weeks. The sentencing happened on May 16.

On August 12, 2022, 77-year-old Rushdie had been seated on stage in a cultural centre Chautauqua Institution, New York state, about to give a talk when Matar came from behind and stabbed him multiple times. It happened just as Rushdie, living under a bounty on his head for decades after the publication of his novel Satanic Verses, had felt the death threats were behind him. In 1989, a year after the book came out, Iran’s leader Ayatollah Khomeini, had issued a fatwa asking Muslims to murder Rushdie. The book’s Italian translator was grievously assaulted and Japanese translator killed in quick succession in 1991. Rushdie himself for years led a life of hiding.

But after almost 35 years, the feeling was the danger no longer existed. He was wrong. Matar is a dual citizen, an American as well as Lebanese. His father lived in Lebanon while he grew up in the US with his mother. She told the media that he had gone to visit his father in 2018 and returned radicalised. He is thought to have acted alone in carrying out the Rushdie attack, inspired by a speech by Hassan Nasrallah, the late head of the Lebanese terrorist organisation Hezbollah. He intended to kill and was surprised when the author survived. He has shown no remorse, and before the sentencing released a statement that said Rushdie showed disrespect to his religion. Matar had however not even read Satanic Verses beyond a couple of pages.

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