Rushdie attacker convicted of supporting Hezbollah in terror trial

Hadi Matar sat in a federal courtroom in Buffalo, New York, on Wednesday as a jury found him guilty of providing material support to Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed faction designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Britain, and dozens of other nations. The 28-year-old was already serving a 25-year sentence for attempting to murder the British-Indian author Salman Rushdie in 2022. This new conviction—for engaging in an act of transnational terrorism—opens the door to a life sentence.

The attack itself was brutal and methodical. Rushdie was stabbed 15 times on stage: in the cheek, chest, eye, neck, and thigh. When he testified during the trial, he described the aftermath with the precision of someone still processing the violence. "I was on the stage, lying down, with an enormous pool of blood all around me," he said. "It was an enormous and expansive lake of blood." He lifted the darkened lens of his glasses to show the jury his damaged eye—the blade had come within millimeters of his brain, leaving him partially blinded. A firefighter who happened to be present provided emergency medical care that likely saved his life.

Prosecutors built their case around a chain of religious and political motivation stretching back decades. In 1989, Iran's religious leader issued a fatwa—a religious edict—calling for Rushdie's death. The author's 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, had sparked outrage among some Muslims who saw it as blasphemous. Rushdie spent nine years in hiding after that edict. But the threat never fully receded. In 2006, the then-leader of Hezbollah gave a speech calling for the fatwa to be enforced. Prosecutors argued that Matar, motivated by this speech and the decades-old religious decree, spent two years planning the attack.

Assistant US Attorney Timothy Lynch framed it starkly in his closing argument: "The defendant decided no one was going to do it, so he had to do it. The defendant is the one who answered that call." The prosecution presented videos Matar had made and walked the jury through the deliberation and preparation that preceded the stabbing.

Matar's defense team argued the attack was not terrorism—that it was a violent act, yes, but not one rooted in ideological motivation. They questioned Rushdie about whether he should have anticipated backlash to his controversial novel. Rushdie's response was direct: "I don't believe the book is on trial. Somebody else is on trial."

Rushdie has since written a memoir about the attack and his recovery, titled Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. Last year he published his first novel in years, The Eleventh Hour. But the physical and psychological scars remain. The partial blindness is permanent. The memory of that pool of blood is permanent.

With this federal conviction, Matar now faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison—a sentence that could run concurrent with or consecutive to the 25 years he is already serving. The case closes one chapter of a story that began with a fatwa in 1989 and continues to shape the life of one of the world's most consequential living writers.