Rushdie's attacker convicted of terrorism in US court

A man has been convicted of federal terrorism charges in the 2022 stabbing of author Salman Rushdie.A US federal court jury found Hadi Matar guilty of all charges against him on Wednesday, New York time, including engaging in an act of transnational terrorism.Matar, 28, is already serving a 25-year New York state prison sentence on an attempted murder conviction related to the August 2022 attack. The federal conviction carries a potential life sentence.Rushdie, who has faced decades-old death threats, was about to speak on writers' safety when he was slashed 15 times in front of a stunned audience. The attack left him gravely wounded, and he lost sight in his right eye.Matar declines to testifyProsecutors asserted that Matar was motivated by the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khamenei's 1989 call for Rushdie's death because of his book The Satanic Verses. Defence lawyer Nathaniel Barone countered that the government had no proof of what was going through Matar's mind.Matar himself declined to testify, but Rushdie did, telling jurors, "I can't say what his ambitions or his aim was, but the wounds were dispersed across my body."Rushdie testified telling jurors "the wounds were dispersed across my body". (Reuters: Fabrizio Bensch)The Satanic Verses, a novel about the lives and dreams of two actors who survive a plane explosion, was published in 1988.It drew critical acclaim in the United Kingdom but engendered protests around the Muslim world over what some believers saw as blasphemous suggestions about Islam's Prophet Mohammed, particularly in a dream sequence. Rushdie, who was born into a Muslim family, has said the dream sequence was just that. But he went into hiding for years, gradually emerging after Iran's government distanced itself in 1998 from Khamenei's fatwa, or religious edict."For two decades or more, I led a public life without a hint of trouble", Rushdie testified at the trial in Buffalo, New York.Yet the fatwa was never rescinded; indeed, Khamenei's successor, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, indicated in 2017 that it remained in effect. An Iranian foundation has offered a more than $3 million bounty for killing Rushdie.Matar's messages showed him zeroing in on RushdieMatar repeatedly broached the fatwa with contacts in messaging apps in 2021 and 2022, according to exhibits shown in court. The messages showed Matar felt Rushdie had attacked Islam and, by surviving, emboldened others to insult the faith. Matar alluded to a 2006 comment along those lines by the late Hezbollah militant group leader Hassan Nasrallah, the messages showed.Born in the US, Matar also holds citizenship in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based. Prosecutors said that photos in Matar's New Jersey bedroom and on his computer indicated his support for Hezbollah, which the US has designated a terrorist organisation.Matar aimed to fulfil the fatwa and "wanted everyone to know he was doing this for Hezbollah", assistant US attorney Timothy Lynch said in an opening statement.The messages showed Matar initially talked about wanting to "expose" Rushdie, then about taking his life. In a private note to himself, he wrote, "We need to kill him ASAP", according to Mr Lynch. The prosecutor said Matar framed the planned killing as part of what he considered a jihad, or holy war.By spring 2022, the electronic chats showed Matar wrote that he had discerned where Rushdie lived and was tracking his public appearances, eventually pointing out his scheduled August 2022 talk at the Chautauqua Institution, a western New York arts and intellectual centre.As Rushdie was being introduced, his attacker climbed on stage behind him, then stabbed him 15 times as the audience gasped.Spectators and another speaker, Henry Reese, scrambled to aid Rushdie. Law enforcement officers, assigned to the event, arrested the attacker — soon identified as Matar — after civilians restrained him.Rushdie published a 2024 memoir about the attack, and then returned to fiction with last year's The Eleventh Hour.The author, who Britain’s late Queen Elizabeth II knighted, received a Dayton Literary Peace Prize lifetime achievement award in November.AP