Salman Rushdie's assailant convicted of terrorism charges: US Justice Department

Published 30 July 2026 · us

The man who stabbed and partially blinded author Salman Rushdie on stage at a New York arts institute in 2022 was found guilty on Wednesday

The man who stabbed and partially blinded author Salman Rushdie on stage at a New York arts institute in 2022 was found guilty on Wednesday of federal terrorism charges stemming from the attack. A federal jury on Wednesday convicted Hadi Matar, 28, of supporting Lebanon's Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, and "engaging in an act of terrorism" when he attacked novelist Salman Rushdie at a New York cultural center in August 2022, news agency AFP reported. Hadi Matar was convicted of attempting to provide material support to Hezbollah, a US-designated terrorist organisation, as well as engaging in transnational terrorism and providing material support to terrorists.

A US District Court jury in Buffalo, New York, returned its guilty verdict on all charges after deliberations of just two hours, capping a trial that began last Tuesday, a spokesperson for federal prosecutors was quoted by Reuters as saying. The Lebanese American "chose to align his values with the terroristic values of the leaders of Iran," said US Attorney Michael DiGiacomo, adding the defendant spent months planning the stabbing that nearly killed Rushdie and left him blind in one eye. Prosecutors said Matar followed a fatwa calling for Rushdie's execution, first issued in 1989 by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, for fictionalizing the Prophet Muhammad in his bestselling book, "The Satanic Verses." The 2022 attack Rushdie, 79, had faced threats on his life since the 1988 publication of his novel "The Satanic Verses." Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader, denounced the book as blasphemous, leading to a call for Rushdie's death, an edict known as a fatwa.

According to evidence presented at his trial, Matar spent more than a year researching the fatwa before deciding to try fulfilling the edict with an attack on Rushdie while the author was speaking at the Chautauqua Institution in Mayville, New York. Rushdie was stabbed with a knife multiple times in

the head, neck, torso and left hand, blinding his right eye and damaging internal organs, requiring emergency surgery and months of recovery. Matar, a US citizen from Fairview, New Jersey, was found guilty of attempted murder in New York state court in 2025, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.