A man convicted of stabbing award-winning British author Salman Rushdie in 2022 was sentenced on Friday to 25 years in prison, the maximum possible term.
Hadi Matar, 27, was found guilty in February of attempted murder and assault in connection to the knife attack that left Rushdie blind in one eye.
Rusdie, 77, was stabbed on stage at the Chautauqua Institution before a lecture and airlifted to a hospital in northwestern Pennsylvania — where he remained for nearly three weeks.
The author, whose 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses” evoked worldwide protests and Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khamenei to call for his death, suffered wounds to his liver, arm and eye.
Matar was also sentenced to seven years, to be served concurrently, for the stabbing of another man who was on stage with Rushdie, according to The Associated Press.
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Before sentencing, Matar told the court Rushdie “wants to disrespect other people,” according to the AP.
“He wants to be a bully, he wants to bully other people,” Matar said. “I don’t agree with that.”
The New Jersey native is still facing federal terrorism charges, to which he pleaded not guilty.
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Though the Iranian state committed to not encouraging anyone to take Rushdie’s life, there was a $4 million bounty on his head, Reuters reported.
Rushdie described the 27-second attack as something that dragged him back in time.
“I saw the man in black running towards me, down the right-hand side of the seating area: Black clothes, black face mask – he was coming in hard and low, a squat missile,” Rushdie told “60 Minutes” host Anderson Cooper in April 2024. “I confess, I had sometimes imagined my assassin rising up in some public forum or other and coming for me in this way.”
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“My first thought when I saw this murderous shape rushing towards me was: So, it’s you. Here you are,” Rushdie said. “It felt like something coming out of the distant past and trying to drag me back in time … back into that distant past in order to kill me.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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