Hadi Matar, the New Jersey man who attacked Salman Rushdie in 2022, seriously wounding him and leaving him blind in one eye, was found guilty on Friday of attempted murder and assault.
The eight-day trial was held in Chautauqua County Court, where the jury deliberated for two hours before rendering their verdict. Matar is facing up to 30 years in prison, according to NBC News.
The attack occurred on Aug. 12, 2022, at the Chautauqua Institution in the western New York town of Chautauqua, where Rushdie was slated to speak at a literary festival.
Rushdie testified on Feb. 11 that he noticed Matar before he rushed onstage with a knife. “I was aware of this person rushing at me from my right hand side,” he said. “I was struck by his eyes which seemed dark and ferocious to me.”
The novelist recalled lying in “a lake of blood” and holding up his hand in self-defense, which was also stabbed. “It occurred to me that I was dying,” Rushdie said, according to the Associated Press. “That was my predominant thought.”
Rushdie was hospitalized for 17 days after the attack and still does not have the use of his right hand.
The author had been receiving death threats since the 1989 publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses,” which led Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to issue a call for Muslims around the world to kill him.
The Booker Prize winner went into hiding until 1998, when the Iranian government called off the fatwa. He has lived in New York City since 2000. The Indian-British writer was knighted in 2007 by Queen Elizabeth II.
Last year, Rushdie published a memoir of the near-fatal assault in a book titled “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.”
