Salman Rushdie’s attacker Hadi Matar gets max sentence for horrific stabbing
The crazed fanatic who tried to stab Salman Rushdie to death on a New York lecture stage — blinding the author in one eye — was sentenced Friday to the maximum term of 25 years in prison.
Hadi Matar, 26, was found guilty of attempted murder and assault in February over the horrific attack that saw him try to carry out a decades-old fatwa by ambushing the 77-year-old novelist as he was giving a lecture about writers’ safety at the Chautauqua Institute in August 2022.
The accused terrorist — who repeatedly shouted pro-Palestinian slogans during his trial — received the maximum 25-year sentence for the attempted murder of Rushdie, who for years earlier had been forced into hiding over death threats.
Matar also got seven years — to run concurrently — for wounding Henry Reese, who was onstage with Rushdie to chat about writers’ safety.
Before getting sentenced, the New Jersey-based fanatic tried to blame Rushdie for being a “bully” and showing “disrespect.”
However, in successfully requesting the maximum sentences, District Attorney Jason Schmidt noted that the stabber “chose this.”
“He designed this attack so that he could inflict the most amount of damage, not just upon Mr. Rushdie, but upon this community, upon the 1,400 people who were there to watch it,” the DA said.
Rushdie remains “traumatized,” Schmidt said. “He has nightmares about what he experienced.”
Matar — who was born in America but also has Lebanese citizenship — still faces a federal trial for allegedly trying to murder Rushdie as an act of terrorism.
Prosecutors also accuse him of providing material support to Lebanon’s terrorist group Hezbollah.
Friday’s sentencing came after a seven-day trial earlier this year in which Rushdie recounted the vicious attack — even showing jurors his sightless right eye, which he keeps hidden behind a darkened lens in his eyeglasses.
Rushdie described, too, in harrowing detail how he feared he was dying when his masked attacker plunged the knife into his head and body more than a dozen times just as he was being introduced on stage to give the lecture on writer safety.
Footage of the bloodshed played during the trial showed a knife-wielding Matar approaching from behind before stabbing him in front of the horrified audience.
Rushdie could be seen stumbling forward as Matar clung to him, swinging and stabbing until they both fell to the floor and were separated by witnesses.
In addition to being blinded in one eye, the author suffered nerve and liver damage — all of which he barely survived.
Rushdie — who detailed his recovery in his 2024 memoir “Knife” — spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital in the aftermath of the attack, as well as more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation center.
Authorities alleged that Matar was trying to carry out a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death when he traveled from his home in Fairview, New Jersey, to target the writer.
Matar believed the fatwa, first issued in 1989, was backed by the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and endorsed in a 2006 speech by the group’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, federal prosecutors charged.
He has pleaded not guilty to providing material to terrorists, attempting to provide material support to Hezbollah and engaging in terrorism transcending national boundaries.
With Post wires
