Salman Rushdie attacker found guilty of attempted murder
A New Jersey man has been convicted of attempted murder for stabbing author Sir Salman Rushdie multiple times on a New York lecture stage in 2022.
A jury also found Hadi Matar, 27, guilty of assault for wounding a man who was on stage with Sir Salman at the time.
The verdicts were delivered on Friday after less than two hours of deliberations following a trial in Chautauqua County Court.
Matar ran onto the stage at the Chautauqua Institution where Sir Salman was about to speak on Aug 12 2022, and stabbed him more than a dozen times before a live audience. The attack left the 77-year-old prizewinning novelist blind in one eye.
Sir Salman was the key witness during seven days of testimony, describing in graphic detail his life-threatening injuries and long and painful recovery.
Matar will be sentenced on April 23 where he could receive up to 25 years in prison.
Jason Schmidt, the district attorney, played a slow-motion video of the attack for the jury during his closing argument, pointing out the assailant as he emerged from the audience, walked up a staircase to the stage and broke into a run toward Sir Salman.
'I want you to look at the unprovoked nature of this attack,' Mr Schmidt said. 'I want you to look at the targeted nature of the attack. There were a lot of people around that day but there was only one person who was targeted.'
Andrew Brautigan, the assistant public defender, told the jury that prosecutors have not proved that Matar intended to kill Sir Salman. The distinction is important for an attempted-murder conviction.
'You will agree something bad happened to Mr Rushdie, but you don't know what Mr Matar's conscious objective was,' Mr Brautigan said. 'The testimony you have heard doesn't establish anything more than a chaotic noisy outburst that occurred that injured Mr Rushdie.'
This is a breaking news story. More to follow
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