Hadi Matar, already serving 25 years for the stabbing of Sir Salman Rushdie, was convicted Wednesday in a New York federal court of providing material support to Hezbollah and engaging in an act of transnational terrorism.
The conviction came after a trial in Buffalo during which Rushdie himself took the stand. Prosecutors argued that Matar, 28, had been motivated by a 2006 speech by the then-leader of Hezbollah calling for a 1989 fatwa against Rushdie to be enforced, and that he had plotted the attack for two years.
Rushdie described the attack and its aftermath in detail before the jury. "I was on the stage, lying down, with an enormous pool of blood all around me," he testified, adding that it was "an enormous and expansive lake of blood." He also lifted the darkened lens on his glasses to show the wound to his eye. The attacker's knife came, he said, "within millimetres from my brain," leaving him partially blinded.
He credited a firefighter with saving his life by providing medical care at the scene. Prosecutors also played videos made by Matar as part of their case.
Assistant US Attorney Timothy Lynch made the argument to the jury in his closing statement. According to The Buffalo News, Lynch said: "The defendant decided no one was going to do it, so he had to do it." He added: "The defendant is the one who answered that call."
Defense attorneys argued the attack was not motivated by terrorism and questioned Rushdie about whether he should have expected a backlash to his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. Rushdie pushed back. "I don't believe the book is on trial," he said. "Somebody else is on trial."
The Satanic Verses, inspired by the life of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, was considered blasphemous by some Muslims when it was published. Iran's religious leader issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie's death, forcing him into hiding for nine years. Rushdie was stabbed 15 times at a public event, with wounds to his cheek, chest, eye, neck and thigh.
Matar was convicted by a state court in 2025 of attempted murder and received his initial 25-year sentence. The federal conviction carries a potential sentence of life in prison.
Rushdie later wrote about the attack and his recovery in a memoir titled Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. Last year he published his first fiction in years, titled The Eleventh Hour.