Jury Needs Two Hours to Convict Hadi Matar of Terrorism in the Stabbing of Salman Rushdie

A federal jury in Buffalo, New York, took only a couple of hours Wednesday to convict Hadi Matar on every count in the government's terrorism case against him, four years after he climbed onto a stage in western New York and stabbed the novelist Salman Rushdie 15 times.

Matar, 28, was found guilty of engaging in an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries, attempting to provide material support to Hezbollah and providing material support to terrorists. He is already serving a 25-year New York state sentence for attempted murder in the same attack. His federal sentencing is set for Nov. 3, when he faces a potential life term.

The August 2022 attack happened at the Chautauqua Institution, an arts and education center in western New York, as Rushdie was being introduced to speak — on the safety of writers. His attacker climbed onto the amphitheater stage behind him and stabbed him as the audience gasped. Spectators and another speaker, Henry Reese, rushed to help. Officers assigned to the event arrested Matar after civilians restrained him. Rushdie was gravely wounded and lost the sight in his right eye.

Prosecutors built their case on Matar's own messages. Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Lynch told jurors in his July 22 opening statement that Matar had written a private note to himself reading, "We need to kill him ASAP," and framed the planned killing as part of what he considered a jihad. Exhibits shown in court traced messaging-app conversations from 2021 and 2022 in which Matar fumed that Rushdie had attacked Islam and that, by surviving, had emboldened others to insult the faith, echoing a 2006 remark by the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. By the spring of 2022 the chats showed him tracking Rushdie's residence and public appearances, eventually settling on the Chautauqua talk. Born in the United States, Matar also holds Lebanese citizenship, and prosecutors said photos in his New Jersey bedroom and on his computer showed support for Hezbollah, which Washington designates a terrorist organization.

"Matar spent months planning and preparing to carry out what he hoped would be the execution of Salman Rushdie," U.S. Attorney Michael DiGiacomo said in a statement after the verdict. John Eisenberg, the assistant attorney general for national security, called the attack "a chilling reminder of the global reach of Iranian terrorism" and said "justice has been done." Iran's government has denied any involvement.

Matar declined to testify. His lawyer, Nathaniel Barone, argued that the government had no proof of what was in his client's head. Rushdie did take the stand. "I can't say what his ambitions or his aim was, but the wounds were dispersed across my body," he told jurors, and described the long quiet that preceded the attack: "For two decades or more, I led a public life without a hint of trouble."

The threat against Rushdie dates to 1989, when Iran's then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his death over "The Satanic Verses," the 1988 novel that followed his Booker Prize-winning "Midnight's Children." Protests over the book spread across the Muslim world; at least 45 people were killed in riots, a Japanese translator was stabbed to death, and an Italian translator and a Norwegian publisher were attacked. Rushdie, born into a Muslim family, spent years in hiding and emerged gradually after Iran's government distanced itself from the fatwa in 1998. The edict was never rescinded — Khomeini's successor, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, indicated in 2017 that it stood — and an Iranian foundation has offered a bounty of more than $3 million. Rushdie published a memoir about the attack in 2024 and returned to fiction last year with "The Eleventh Hour."