Skip to content

Man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie on stage sentenced to 25 years in prison

# The man convicted of stabbing Salman Rushdie on a New York lecture stage in 2022, leaving the prizewinning author blind in one eye, was sentenced on Friday to serve 25 years in prison. A jury found the 27-year-old Hadi Matar guilty of attempted murder and assault in February. Authorities said Matar was attempting to carry out a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death. Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued the fatwa after publication of Rushdie’s novel, “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims consider blasphemous.