Latest news with #Knife:MeditationsAfteranAttemptedMurder
The Star
16-05-2025
- The Star
Assailant who stabbed author Salman Rushdie sentenced to 25 years
Author Salman Rushdie poses during a photocall ahead of the presentation of his book "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder" at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, Germany, May 16, 2024. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch/File Photo (Reuters) - The man who stabbed and partially blinded novelist Salman Rushdie onstage at a Western New York arts institute in 2022 was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Friday for an attack that also wounded a second man, the district attorney said. Rushdie, 77, has faced death threats since the 1988 publication of his novel "The Satanic Verses," which Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader, denounced as blasphemous, leading to a call for Rushdie's death, an edict known as a fatwa. Hadi Matar, 27, a U.S. citizen from Fairview, New Jersey, was found guilty of attacking the author in the Chautauqua County Court in Mayville, New York, in February. He faced a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison on the attempted murder charge. Video that captured the assault shows Matar rushing the Chautauqua Institution's stage as Rushdie was being introduced to the audience for a talk about keeping writers safe from harm. Some of the video was shown to the jury during the seven days of testimony. "He's traumatized. He has nightmares about what he experienced," Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said after the sentencing hearing, referring to what Rushdie suffered. "Obviously this is a major setback for an individual that was starting to emerge in his very later years of life into society after going into hiding after the fatwa." Also hurt in the attack was Henry Reese, co-founder of Pittsburgh's City of Asylum, a nonprofit that helps exiled writers. He was conducting the talk with Rushdie that morning. Schmidt said Matar was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the second degree attempted murder charge stemming from the attack against Rushdie and seven years for a second degree assault charged for the stabbing of Reese. The sentences will run concurrently. Rushdie, an atheist born into a Muslim Kashmiri family in India, was stabbed with a knife multiple times in the head, neck, torso and left hand. The attack blinded his right eye and damaged his liver and intestines, requiring emergency surgery and months of recovery. Matar did not testify at his trial. His defense lawyers told jurors that the prosecutors had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt the necessary criminal intent to kill needed for a conviction of attempted murder, and argued that he should have been charged with assault. Matar's attorney Nathaniel Barone said his client will file an appeal. "I know if he had the opportunity, he would not be sitting where he's sitting today. And if he could change things, he would," Barone said. Matar also faces federal charges brought by prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office in Western New York, accusing him of attempting to murder Rushdie as an act of terrorism. Prosecutors accuse him of providing material support to Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization. Matar is due to face those charges at a separate trial in Buffalo. (Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Chicago; Editing by Frank McGurty and Frances Kerry)
Montreal Gazette
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Montreal Gazette
Nationalism can be a positive or negative force, Salman Rushdie says
By In the Hotel 10 basement on Sherbrooke St., security guards inspected a procession of writers, editors and literature lovers as they arrived at a literary roundtable discussion. The security was high because this wasn't just any literary event. One of the panellists, author Salman Rushdie, was attacked with a knife in 2022 as he was about to give a public lecture in New York, leaving him blind in one eye. 'Two and a half years ago was a bad audience,' the 77-year-old author joked at his talk on Saturday afternoon, while wearing his signature glasses with a black-tinted right lens. The Indian-born author was the object of multiple death threats and assassination attempts after the publication of his famous 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. His most recent autobiographical work from 2024, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, recounts the stabbing attack. Rushdie's upcoming novella collection, The Eleventh Hour, is scheduled to be published this fall. Rushdie was in Montreal for the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival, where he was awarded the Grand Prix Award for a lifetime of literary achievement and interviewed by longtime CBC Radio host Eleanor Wachtel. The Blue Metropolis Grand Prix is given each year to a world-renowned author, accompanied by a $10,000 grant. Earlier in the day, Rushdie gave a talk with historian Simon Sebag Montefiore around themes of history, dreams and imagination. At the talk, Rushdie discussed his complicated feelings toward growing Canadian nationalism, which has spiked in reaction to annexation threats from the United States. '(It's a) very odd word, 'nationalism,' because there are contexts in which it's been a very positive force. For example, the growth of the nationalist movement in India is what ended up getting rid of the British Empire, and I can see that as a kind of almost entirely positive thing,' he said. 'But there are other parts of the world where nationalism has become associated with more primitive kinds of right-wing politics. So it's mixed. It's a word that you have to be careful about.' Rushdie also spoke about how history offers lessons on staying optimistic, even during challenging times. 'One of the things that the study of history taught me was that there's nothing inevitable about history. You know, history doesn't run on tram lines, and enormous changes are possible at very short notice,' he said. 'In all these changes at short notice ... I think that doesn't necessarily mean things get better, they can get worse. But at least it means that change is constant.' While Rushdie has long explored the lessons of history in his work, he noted that the broader public often fails to do the same. 'To take only recent history, the second election of Donald Trump. If you have the example of the first presidency of Donald Trump, then you should learn from that. But instead, everybody learned the wrong lesson. And now you get all these statements in the press of kind of buyer's remorse, people who voted for Trump regretting it.' The Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival runs until 6 p.m. on Sunday, and will hold both in-person panels at the Hotel 10 as well as online programming.
Euronews
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Salman Rushdie announces first fiction work since near-fatal stabbing
ADVERTISEMENT Author Salman Rushdie is set to release his first work of fiction since the attempt on his life in 2022 . "The Eleventh Hour", which comprises three novellas bookended by a prologue and epilogue, will be released globally on 4 November this year. In its announcement of the book, publisher Penguin Random House described it as "a moving, masterful collection of stories that transport us around the world from Bombay neighbourhoods to elite English universities". "Salman Rushdie's new fiction moves between the places he has grown up in, inhabited, explored, and left. In doing so, he asks fundamental questions we all one day face. How does one deal with, accommodate, or rail against entering the eleventh hour, the final stage of your life? How can you bid farewell to the places you have made home?" The Eleventh Hour Random House via AP Rushdie himself described the book in personal terms. "The three novellas in this volume, all written in the last twelve months, explore themes and places that have been much on my mind — mortality, Bombay, farewells, England (especially Cambridge), anger, peace, America. And Goya and Kafka and Bosch as well." "I'm happy that the stories, very different from one another in setting, story and technique, nevertheless manage to be in conversation with one another, and with the two stories that serve as prologue and epilogue to this threesome. I have come to think of the quintet as a single work, and I hope readers may see and enjoy it in the same way." While Rushdie's most recent novel, " Victory City ", was published in 2023, he had already completed it before the attempt on his life in 2022, which came 33 years after the then-supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his execution in punishment for his novel "The Satanic Verses". In his memoir recalling the attack, " Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder ", Rushdie described the moment he saw 24-year-old assailant Hadi Matar dashing towards him. "In the corner of my right eye – the last thing my right eye would ever see – I saw the man in black running toward me down the right-hand side of the seating area," Rushdie wrote. "Black clothes, black face mask. He was coming in hard and low. A squat missile." 'I confess, I had sometimes imagined my assassin rising up in some public forum or other, and coming for me in just this way. So my first thought when I saw this murderous shape rushing towards me was, 'So it's you. Here you are.'" "The Eleventh Hour" by Salman Rushdie will be published on 4 November (Vintage).
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Yahoo
Salman Rushdie attacker found guilty of attempted murder after brutal onstage stabbing
After an eight-day trial, the man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie in August 2022 was found guilty Friday of attempted murder and assault. Hadi Matar, 27, of New Jersey, was on trial in Chautauqua County Court in western New York, accused of rushing onto the stage where Rushdie was about to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution and stabbing the 77-year-old writer more than a dozen times in the neck, stomach, chest, hand and right eye. The attack left Rushdie partially blind. Rushdie took the stand on the second day of testimony. Sitting about 20 feet from Matar, he said that he feared he was dying during the attack and that he initially thought he was being struck with a fist. 'But I saw a large quantity of blood pouring onto my clothes,' Rushdie said. 'He was hitting me repeatedly. Hitting and slashing.' The Indian-born British American author detailed his months of recovery in a 2024 memoir, "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder." Rushdie spent years in hiding after the Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, in 1989 calling for his death after the publication of his novel "The Satanic Verses," which is considered blasphemous by some Muslims. In court on Friday, Matar's attorney, Andrew Brautigam, argued that the prosecution wasn't able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Matar had intended to kill Rushdie, emphasizing that an investigation into his background wasn't conducted and that Rushdie himself described the attack as an assault rather than an attempted murder. To counter, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt played a slow-motion video of the attack, showing the assailant dash toward Rushdie, The Associated Press reported. 'I want you to look at the unprovoked nature of this attack,' Schmidt told the jurors. '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.' Matar, a dual American and Lebanese citizen, declined to testify in his defense earlier Friday, according to The Associated Press. He has been held without bail since the attack. The courtroom was packed as the lawyers presented their closing arguments Friday afternoon. The jury began deliberating shortly after, reaching a verdict about two hours later. Matar could face up to 25 years in prison, NBC affiliate WGRZ reported. Sentencing is set for April 23. Brautigam did not immediately respond to a request for comment. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Man found guilty of attempted murder of author Salman Rushdie in brutal stabbing
Feb. 21 (UPI) -- A jury on Friday convicted a New Jersey man of second-degree attempted murder and assault in the brutal stabbing of author Salman Rushdie on an upstate New York lecture stage in 2022. Hadi Matar, 27, was found guilty within two hours of deliberations after the two-week trial in Chautauqua County Court. Matar also was found guilty of assault for injuring Henry Reese, who was moderating the event. County Judge David Foley set sentencing for April 23. Matar could receive up to 25 years in prison. Matar faces separate federal terrorism-linked charges in Buffalo for allegedly providing assistance to the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah. The charges allege that Matar may have been motivated by an endorsement of a fatwa by Hezbollah. Matar, who rejected a plea deal in the state case, did not testify and the defense called no witnesses. Rushdie, now 77, was the prosecution's key witness during seven days of testimony. He described in graphic detail what happened on Aug. 12, 2022, and his painful recovery. He lost one eye in the attack. Rushdie, who sat about 20 feet away from Matar, said that he feared he was dying. "I saw a large quantity of blood pouring onto my clothes," said Rushdie, who initially thought he was being struck by the man's fist. "He was hitting me repeatedly. Hitting and slashing." Rushdie was stabbed and slashed more than a dozen times in the head, throat, torso, thigh and hand. He spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital and more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation center. His 2024 memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, described his ordeal. During his closing arguments, District Attorney Jason Schmidt played a slow-motion video of the attack "I want you to look at the unprovoked nature of this attack," 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." Schmidt reminded jurors a trauma surgeon testified Rushdie's injuries would have been fatal without quick treatment. Assistant public defender Andrew Brautigan said that prosecutors hadn't proved that Matar intended to kill Rushdie. "You will agree something bad happened to Mr. Rushdie, but you don't know what Mr. Matar's conscious objective was," Brautigan said. "The testimony you have heard doesn't establish anything more than a chaotic noisy outburst that occurred that injured Mr. Rushdie." Another public defender, Nathaniel Barone, told reporters Matar likely would have faced a lesser charge of assault were it not for Rushdie's celebrity. "We think that it became an attempted murder because of the notoriety of the alleged victim in the case," Barone said after testimony concluded Thursday. "That's been it from the very beginning. It's been nothing more, nothing less. And it's for publicity purposes. It's for self-interest purposes." Rushdie, a dual American-Lebonese citizen, spent years in hiding after Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, calling for his death in 1989 after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verse, which some Muslims consider blasphemous. But after Khomeini announced that it would not enforce the decree, Rushdie traveled freely for the past 25 years.
