New York, US, (EFE). – Hadi Matar, who attacked author Salman Rushdie with a knife during a literary conference in Chautauqua, New York state, in August 2022, was found guilty by a jury on Friday.
Matar, 27, was convicted of attempted murder for stabbing Rushdie multiple times and of assault for wounding Henry Reese, who was on stage conducting the lecture.
The young man ran onto the stage at the Chautauqua Institution on Aug. 12, 2022, and stabbed the author over a dozen times in front of a live audience.
His sentencing is scheduled for April 23, and he could receive up to 25 years in prison.
During the trial, Matar’s lawyers declined to call their witnesses, and the accused did not testify in his defense.
The defense said Matar likely would have faced a lesser assault charge had it not been for Rushdie’s celebrity.
“You will agree that something bad happened to Mr. Rushdie, but you don’t know what Mr. Matar’s conscious goal was,” said Assistant Public Defender Andrew Brautigan.
“The testimony you’ve heard does not establish anything more than a chaotic, noisy outburst that occurred and injured Mr. Rushdie,” he added.
The lawyers argued that Matar was carrying knives, not a gun or bomb, and in response to testimony that Rushdie’s injuries were life-threatening, they noted that his heart and lungs were uninjured.
Rushdie testified during the trial; he told the court that he initially thought the attacker was hitting him, but then saw blood pouring onto his clothes as the attacker continued “stabbing, slashing.”
“It was a stab wound in my eye and it was very painful. And after that, I was screaming because of the pain and I couldn’t see out of the eye,” the author said.
He was stabbed 15 times in the eye, neck, chest, and hand, resulting in the loss of vision in his right eye, some motor function in his left hand, and damage to his liver and intestines.
“It occurred to me that I was dying. That was my predominant thought,” Rushdie said, adding that the people who subdued the attacker likely saved his life.
District Attorney Jason Schmidt worked throughout the trial to convince the jury of the seriousness of the case, presenting a variety of evidence, including the full video in which Matar is seen bursting onto the stage, stabbing and chasing Rushdie, leaving him lying on the floor in a pool of blood.
Rushdie was forced to live in hiding for more than two decades after Iran’s theocratic regime issued a fatwa (religious edict) calling for his head for blasphemy following the publication of The Satanic Verses (1989).
In 1991, the book’s Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, was murdered, and the Italian translator, Ettore Capriolo, survived an attack.
Two years later, Norwegian publisher William Nygaard was seriously injured, and the book’s Turkish translator, Aziz Nesin, survived an arson attack that killed 37 people.
Since the early 2000s, Rushdie has been able to leave anonymity behind and live a reasonably normal life, albeit with security precautions.
Knife” is Rushdie’s latest memoir, in which he describes how his life changed after the assassination attempt. EFE
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