The man who stabbed writer Salman Rushdie on a New York lecture stage in 2022, leaving him blind in a single eye, was sentenced Friday to 25 years in jail.
A jury discovered Hadi Matar, 27, responsible of tried homicide and assault in February.
Rushdie didn’t return to court docket to the western New York courtroom for his assailant’s sentencing however submitted a sufferer impression assertion. During the trial, the 77-year-old writer was the important thing witness, describing how he believed he was dying when a masked attacker plunged a knife into his head and physique greater than a dozen instances as he was being launched on the Chautauqua Institution to talk about author security.
Before being sentenced, Matar stood and made an announcement about freedom of speech by which he referred to as Rushdie a hypocrite.
“Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people,” said Matar, clad in white-striped jail clothing and wearing handcuffs. “He needs to be a bully, he needs to bully different individuals. I don’t agree with that.”
Matar obtained the utmost 25-year sentence for the tried homicide of Rushdie and 7 years for wounding a person who was on stage with him. The sentences should run concurrently as a result of each victims have been injured in the identical occasion, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt stated.
In requesting the utmost sentence, Schmidt informed the choose that Matar “selected this. He designed this assault in order that he might inflict probably the most quantity of harm, not simply upon Mr. Rushdie, however upon this group, upon the 1,400 individuals who have been there to observe it.”
Public defender Nathaniel Barone identified that Matar had an in any other case clear felony document and disputed that the individuals within the viewers needs to be thought-about victims, suggesting {that a} sentence of 12 years can be applicable.
“Every day since then, for the last couple of years, this case has been an international publicity sponge,” Barone said. “There was no presumption, ever, of innocence for Mr. Matar from the very starting.”
Rushdie spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital and greater than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation heart. The writer of “Midnight’s Children,” “The Moor’s Last Sigh” and “Victory City” detailed his restoration in his 2024 memoir, “Knife.”
Matar subsequent faces a federal trial on terrorism-related expenses. While the primary trial targeted totally on the small print of the knife assault itself, the following one is predicted to delve into the extra sophisticated subject of motive.
Video of the assault, captured by the venue’s cameras and performed at trial, present Matar approaching the seated Rushdie from behind and reaching round him to stab at his torso with a knife. As the viewers gasps and screams, Rushdie is seen elevating his arms and rising from his seat, strolling and stumbling for a number of steps with Matar hanging on, swinging and stabbing till they each fall and are surrounded by onlookers who rush in to separate them.
Jurors in Matar’s first trial delivered their verdict after lower than two hours of deliberation.
The Indian-born author has lived with a bounty on his head for the reason that publication of his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses,” which is considered by some Muslims as containing blasphemous passages.
Source: www.dailysabah.com