Hadi Matar, a Lebanese-American man who attacked and blinded Indian-born British author Salman Rushdie three years ago, was convicted of attempted murder by a jury in western New York on Saturday.
According to an AP report, he will be sentenced on April 23, and faces up to 25 years in prison.
Matar, who stood for the verdict, looked down but had no obvious reaction when the jury delivered it. As he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, he quietly uttered, “Free Palestine,” echoing comments he has frequently made while entering and leaving the trial
Who is Hadi Matar?
Hadi Matar (L) a Lebanese American who was convicted for attacking Salman Rushdie (Top R)
1. Matar, 27, holds a dual United States and Lebanese citizenship. Hailing from Fairview in New Jersey, he was motivated to attack Rushdie by a 2006 speech in which the leader of the militant group Hezbollah endorsed a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.
2. In 2022, Matar rushed to the Chautauqua Institution’s stage as Rushdie was being introduced to the audience for a talk about keeping writers safe from harm.
3. He stabbed 77-year-old Rushdie with a knife multiple times in the head, neck, torso and left hand, blinding his right eye and damaging his liver and intestines, requiring emergency surgery and months of recovery.
4. Matar was also found guilty of attempted murder in the second degree and assault in the second degree for stabbing Henry Reese, the co-founder of Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum, a non-profit group that helps exiled writers, who was conducting the talk with Rushdie that morning, the AP report added.
5. Matar told the New York Post that he had traveled from his home in New Jersey after seeing the Rushdie event advertised because he disliked the novelist, saying Rushdie had attacked Islam.
6. Matar was born in the United States to parents who emigrated from Yaroun in southern Lebanon.
Yaroun, near the Israeli border, is a stronghold of the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah, and portraits of Hezbollah and Iranian leaders are displayed throughout the village, according to the Associated Press.
An official from Yaroun said that Matar is a Shiite and also holds Lebanese citizenship, according to wire agencies.
7. Law enforcement sources told NBC News that Matar was born in California and had moved to Fairview, New Jersey in the last few years where he lived with his mother Silvana Fardos and 14-year-old twin sisters.
Fardos told DailyMail.com that she learned about the attack when her daughter called her to inform her about FBI agents at her door.
Federal agents had seized items from her son’s basement apartment – including a computer, books and knives, she said.
8. Fardos said that she had disowned her son and that he was “responsible for his actions”.
Matar’s parents divorced in 2004 and his father moved back to Lebanon.
He appeared to change after taking a month-long trip to Lebanon to stay with his father in 2018, his mother said.
Prior to the trip, he had been a “popular, loving” son, but upon his return, he became introverted and moved into an apartment in her basement. He began sleeping during the day and staying up all night.
“I was expecting him to come back motivated, to complete school, to get his degree and a job. But instead, he locked himself in the basement. He had changed a lot, he didn’t say anything to me or his sisters for months,” Fardos told DailyMail.com.
Fardos noticed her son was becoming more religious when he questioned her about not introducing him to Islam at a young age.
“I didn’t push my kids into religion or force anything on my son. I don’t know anyone in Iran, all my family are here,” she told the outlet.
At the time, his father Hassan Matar, who lives in Yaroun, locked himself in his home and refused to speak about the stabbing, Reuters reported.
After the New York arrest, State Police Major Eugene Staniszewski said at a news conference that a motive for the attack was unclear.
Matar’s social media accounts indicated he held sympathies for Hezbollah and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, law enforcement sources told NBC News.
Iran’s former spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on Rushdie after the publication of his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.
The threat, which has never been rescinded, forced Rushdie into hiding for nearly a decade after his Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi was stabbed to death in 1991, and a Norwegian publisher William Nygaard was shot outside his home in 1993.
9. The assault on Rushdie was celebrated in the Iranian media at the time.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani denied any link to the stabbing in a televised address and blamed the author and his supporters.
Matar has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault and is being held without bail at Chautauqua County Jail. His trial began on February 10, 2025.
10. Salman Rushdie ‘gravely’ wounded in attack
Rushdie was ‘gravely’ wounded in the attack. Rushdie was stabbed in the neck, stomach, chest, hand, and right eye, leaving him partially blind and with permanent damage to one hand.
He eventually lost his right eye and was left with permanent damage to one of his hands.
MSN/ Independent UK