Salman Rushdie attacker sentenced to 25 years in prison
The New Jersey man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie at a New York lecture in 2022 has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The novelist was partially blinded from the attack, which saw the 27-year-old stab him multiple times in the face and neck. He also sustained damage to the liver and a paralysed hand by nerve damage in his arm.
According to the Associated Press, Hadi Matar, the man behind the attack, made a statement before the sentencing. In it, he called Rushdie a hypocrite, stating: “Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people. He wants to be a bully, he wants to bully other people. I don’t agree with that.”
The Indian author, who was educated at Rugby School in the UK, is famed for his book The Satanic Verses. The novel has been banned in Iran since 1988 as many Muslims consider it to be blasphemous. Around a year later, Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death. Iran has also offered over $3million in reward for anyone who kills Rushdie.
This death warrant was endorsed over 35 years later by Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah chief at the time. Matar was motivated by the re-ignited interest in the reward. However, in 2022, the assailant admitted he’d only read a few pages of the book.
Rushdie spoke of the attack earlier this year, stating his certainty towards his imminent demise: “My sense of time was quite cloudy, I was in pain from my eye and hand, and it occurred to me quite clearly I was dying.”
Rushdie went on to expand on the attack, metaphorically and emotionally, in a new memoir, titled ‘Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder’.
He remains an active writer today and will release a new collection of stories, The Eleventh Hour, in November 2025.
