The man convicted of the assualt and attempted murder of Sir Salman Rushdie muttered “Free Palestine” as he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, it has been reported.
Hadi Matar ran onto a stage at the Chautauqua Institution in New York on August 12, 2022, and attacked Rushdie with a 10in knife as the author was about to speak to an audience.
The Satanic Verses author was left blinded in one eye as a result of the attack.
A jury took just under two hours to convict Matar, 27, after a two-week trial at a county courthouse in Mayville, and he now faces a possible 25 year long prison sentence.
Salman Rushdie speaking on stage at festival in Wales in 2018 (Photo: Alamy)
But during the hearing he made no secret of his devotion to the Palestine cause saying “Free Palestine” during the proceedings on several occasions, The Times reported.
He now also faces federal terrorism charges of attempting to support the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah in the attack on Rushdie.
“We allege that in attempting to murder Salman Rushdie in New York in 2022, Hadi Matar committed an act of terrorism in the name of Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organisation aligned with the Iranian regime,” Merrick Garland, then the US attorney-general, had said.
Matar is from a Lebanese-American family, is facing claims that he was motivated by the fatwa against Rushdie, made by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, in response to his Santanic Verses novel.
