A jury has convicted a New Jersey man for tried homicide within the 2022 stabbing assault on creator Salman Rushdie whereas the creator was on stage at a talking occasion in upstate New York.
Hadi Matar was discovered responsible of second-degree tried homicide and assault in reference to the assault on the Chautauqua Establishment in southwestern New York.
The jury started deliberating round noon Friday earlier than reaching their verdict inside two hours.
Throughout closing arguments Friday morning, jurors heard starkly totally different accounts of the assault, which occurred on Aug. 12, 2022, whereas Rushdie was talking earlier than an viewers on the training middle.
Chautauqua County District Legal professional Jason Schmidt performed slow-motion video displaying Matar rising from the viewers, sprinting towards Rushdie, and launching a violent assault. Schmidt described the stabbing as a deliberate, focused act, arguing that putting somebody 10 to fifteen instances within the face and neck made loss of life a foreseeable end result. A trauma surgeon testified that Rushdie would have died with out speedy medical intervention.
The protection countered that prosecutors didn’t show Matar supposed to kill Rushdie and characterised the incident as a chaotic, noisy outburst somewhat than a calculated homicide try. Public defender Nathaniel Barone argued that Matar was overcharged because of Rushdie’s celeb, noting that he used knives somewhat than a gun or bomb and that Rushdie’s very important organs weren’t harmed.
On this courtroom sketch, Salman Rushdie testifies on the witness stand gesturing how the attacker slashed his throat when he was attacked on the Chautauqua Institute, throughout the trial of Hadi Matar, in Chautauqua County court docket, in Mayville, N.Y., Feb. 11, 2025.
Elizabeth Williams/AP
Rushdie, 77, took the stand throughout the trial, vividly describing the assault that blinded him in a single eye. He described his attacker’s eyes as “very ferocious” as he approached, earlier than “hitting and slashing” him in his chest, torso, waist and eye as he struggled to get away, in keeping with The Related Press.
“It occurred to me that I used to be dying. That was my predominant thought,” Rushdie mentioned, in keeping with the AP.
Rushdie recounted the assault in his e-book, “Knife: Meditations After an Tried Homicide,” which was printed final 12 months.
On this Sept. 21, 2024, file photograph, Salman Rushdie, creator, is proven throughout the Cliveden Literary Competition 2024 at Cliveden Home in Windsor, England.
David Levenson/Getty Pictures, FILE
Henry Reese, who was moderating the occasion and was wounded within the assault, additionally took the stand throughout the trial.
Reese advised jurors he initially thought somebody was operating towards Rushdie as “a prank” however “sooner or later it turned actual, and I bought up and tried to cease the attacker,” in keeping with the AP.
The assailant was tackled by bystanders and pinned to the stage.
Matar didn’t testify and the protection known as no witnesses throughout the two-week trial.
He rejected a plea deal forward of the trial.
Hadi Matar, middle, is escorted from the courtroom on the Chautauqua County Courthouse after his second day of trial, Feb. 11, 2025, in Mayville, N.Y.
Gene J. Puskar/AP
Matar nonetheless faces federal terrorism costs in reference to the assault. He was indicted by a grand jury on three counts, together with trying to offer materials assist to a international terrorist group and offering materials assist to terrorists. The indictment alleges that he “knowingly did try to offer materials assist and assets” to Hezbollah, a delegated international terrorist group, and “had engaged, and was partaking, in terrorism.”
Matar was additionally charged with an act of terrorism transcending nationwide boundaries for the assault in opposition to Rushdie. The indictment alleges that he “did knowingly try to kill, and did knowingly maim, commit an assault leading to critical bodily harm, and assault with a harmful weapon.”
He has pleaded not responsible to the federal costs.
