A jury on Friday found Hadi Matar, an American-Lebanese man, guilty of attempting to kill novelist Salman Rushdie by storming a stage and repeatedly stabbing the Satanic Verses author.
Matar now faces up to 25 years in prison and is set to be sentenced on April 23, a court official confirmed. He was convicted on charges of attempted murder and assault.
His legal team had attempted to prevent witnesses from portraying Rushdie as a victim of persecution, following Iran’s 1989 fatwa that called for the author’s assassination over alleged blasphemy in The Satanic Verses.
Matar had previously admitted to reading only two pages of The Satanic Verses but believed the author had “attacked Islam.”
Rushdie, the target of a 1989 fatwa calling for his assassination, spent a decade in seclusion in London before resuming a relatively normal life in New York. His work became a flashpoint in the global debate between free speech advocates and those who argue that religious criticism—especially of Islam—is unacceptable.
In his memoir Knife, published last year, Rushdie detailed his near-fatal attack and the lasting physical damage he suffered. The optical nerve in his right eye was severed, leading doctors to stitch the eye shut in a painful procedure.
