Salman Rushdie attack: Hadi Matar found guilty of attempted murder after stabbing author multiple times on stage
A man has been found guilty of attempted murder for attacking author Sir Salman Rushdie.
The 77-year-old British-American writer was stabbed multiple times as he was preparing to give a speech in New York in 2022.
He was blinded in his right eye in the incident, suffered a severely damaged hand, and spent months recovering.
Following a trial in Chautauqua County Court, a jury convicted 27-year-old Hadi Matar of attempting to murder Sir Salman, after less than two hours of deliberations.
He was also found guilty of assault for wounding Henry Reese, who was on stage with Sir Salman at the time.
Matar gave no obvious reaction to the verdict, and quietly muttered “free Palestine” as he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs.
Hadi Matar was found guilty by a jury after less than two hours of deliberations. Pic: AP
The court heard Matar ran on to the stage at the Chautauqua Institution where the author was about to speak on 12 August 2022, and stabbed him in front of an audience.
The Indian-born writer, who spent most of the 1990s in hiding in the UK after receiving death threats over his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, was stabbed about 15 times.
Sir Salman was attacked in the head, neck, torso, and left hand. He also suffered damage to his liver and intestines.
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From 2024: Salman Rushdie recalls stabbing
‘I was dying’
During the trial, Sir Salman described the moment Matar attacked him and told the court: “I only saw him at the last minute.
“I was aware of someone wearing black clothes, or dark clothes and a black face mask. I was very struck by his eyes, which were dark and seemed very ferocious to me.
“I thought he was hitting me with his fist but I saw a large quantity of blood pouring onto my clothes.
“He was hitting me repeatedly. Hitting and slashing.”
The writer then said he felt “a sense of great pain and shock,” and added: “It occurred to me that I was dying. That was my predominant thought.”
The court also heard that Mr Reese, the co-founder of Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum, had suffered a gash to his forehead in the attack.
‘Attack was unprovoked’
During closing arguments earlier on Friday, District Attorney Jason Schmidt showed the jury a video of the attack and said: “I want you to look at the unprovoked nature of this attack.
“I want you to look at the targeted nature of the attack. There were a lot of people around that day but there was only one person who was targeted.”
Matar’s defence team argued prosecutors did not prove he intended to kill the writer, with Andrew Brautigan telling the jury: “You will agree something bad happened to Mr Rushdie, but you don’t know what Mr Matar’s conscious objective was.”
Mr Schmidt said that while it was not possible to read Matar’s mind, “it’s foreseeable that if you’re going to stab someone 10 or 15 times about the face and neck, it’s going to result in a fatality”.
The judge set a sentencing date of 23 April, when Matar could be jailed for up to 25 years.
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Matar faces a separate, federal indictment from prosecutors in the US attorney’s office in western New York alleging that he attempted to murder Sir Salman as an act of terrorism.
He is also accused of providing material support to the armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon, which the US has designated as a terrorist organisation.
Entertainment
Cassie challenged over Diddy ‘freak off’ allegations – as explicit messages read in court
Sexually explicit messages between RnB singer Cassie and her former boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs have been read in court, with some showing her expressing apparent enthusiasm about the “freak off” sex sessions with escorts she alleges she was forced into.
The 38-year-old, whose full name is Casandra Ventura, faced a full day of cross-examination from the hip-hop mogul’s defence lawyers, who are attempting to convince the jury she consented to a “swingers lifestyle”.
Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution, in relation to Ms Ventura and other women. His lawyers have conceded he could be violent, but say nothing he did amounted to crimes of this nature.
Ms Ventura alleges she was physically abused and degraded for years by the powerful hip-hop star and music executive, accusing him of violence, coercion, blackmail and rape.
Prosecutors say he exploited and used his network of employees to facilitate illegal activities, which is a key part of the racketeering charge.
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs trial: Day 4 – As it happened
Messages sent by Cassie to Diddy were read in court. Pic: Reuters/ Jane Rosenberg
But during the fourth day of the trial in Manhattan, New York, defence lawyers pushed back, focusing on texts and emails that were both romantic and sexually explicit.
“I’m always ready to freak off,” the court heard Ms Ventura wrote in one message in August 2009. In another she told him, about a freak off: “Can’t wait.” And in another, jurors were told, she described a video of one sex session with an escort as “dope”.
The pair were together, on and off, for about 11 years from 2007 to 2018.
Combs, whose mother Janice has been in court all week to support him, along with some of his children, appeared relaxed as the messages were read aloud for jurors.
Messages from 4 March 2016 – the day before an incident at the InterContinental Hotel in Century City, Los Angeles, in which Combs was filmed on CCTV seeming to attack Ms Ventura in a hallway, as he was wearing just a towel and socks – were also read in court.
Footage from this incident, which was first made public in May 2024, has been a key piece of evidence during the trial. Ms Ventura has told the court it happened as she tried to leave a freak off session after being hit by Combs.
Janice Combs was in court to support her son once again. Pic: Reuters/ David ‘Dee’ Delgado
Freak off ‘felt dirty, grimy’
During cross-examination, the court heard Ms Ventura sent a sexually explicit message the day before this.
She also sent him a message saying, “Baby I want to FO so bad but I dont want to f*** myself up”.
Ms Ventura has told the court this was damage limitation and that she wanted to keep him happy, as she had a film premiere coming up a few days later.
Jurors also heard details of an email she sent in 2009, in which she expressed conflicting feelings about taking part in these sex sessions with escorts.
In the email, she told Combs she needed to trust him “beyond it just being sexual” – that in order to be more open sexually, “I need to feel safe, like home”.
She told him “the last time was a mistake but since has made me feel a little dirty, and grimy as opposed to sexual and spontaneous”.
This was the reason she was going “back and forth in my mind with wanting and not wanting to do it”, she wrote. At first, when they were “so in love… there were no questions asked, it felt right”.
She told him: “I get nervous that I’m just becoming the girlfriend that you get your fantasies off with.”
Brian Steel is one of the defence laywers on Combs’s team. Pic: Reuters/ David ‘Dee’ Delgado
Ms Ventura has told the court that she fell in love with Combs very quickly when they got together, when she was 21 and he was 37. She has said she wanted to please him, but became fearful of him.
At one point during cross-examination, she raised that she felt jurors were not hearing the full context of some of the messages being highlighted, saying: “There’s a lot we skipped over.”
Combs’s lawyers are painting his sexual preferences as part of a “swingers” lifestyle that has been mentioned previously at trial, saying people might not agree with it but it does not make him guilty of sex trafficking.
Questioned on this, Ms Ventura said they were “very different”.
She was also asked about drug use, her own and Combs’s, and at one point told the court she believed he was addicted to opiates when they were together.
She also said he was taken to hospital after overdosing on opiates at the Playboy Mansion in 2012 – something which was reported on by outlets including TMZ at the time, when it was said he had suffered a migraine.
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Cassie breaks down in tears during previous day’s evidence
Judge frustrated with Diddy’s lawyers
Away from the questioning, a notable moment in court came when Judge Arun Subramanian became frustrated with Diddy’s lawyers over how long they will spend cross-examining Ms Ventura.
He told them they should get a day and a half – the same time the prosecution had. “In what universe did you not understand this is what was going to happen?” he told them.
The judge is keen to keep the trial on time and particularly Ms Ventura’s evidence, as she is eight months pregnant with her third child with husband Alex Fine, who has been supporting her in court.
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Diddy – a timeline of allegations
Everything you need to know about the trial
She has now spent almost three days on the witness stand – tomorrow will be her fourth – and became emotional towards the end of her testimony on her second day.
The criminal case against Combs comes after Ms Ventura sued him in 2023, accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse. The suit was settled in 24 hours, for a figure that was undisclosed at the time.
Ms Ventura has confirmed during the trial that this was $20m (about £15m).
Combs, 55, has been jailed since September, and faces at least 15 years or possibly life in prison if convicted.
Singer Chris Brown has been arrested over an alleged bottle attack at a London nightclub two years ago.
The US R&B star was arrested at a hotel in Manchester in the early hours of Thursday by Metropolitan Police detectives.
The 36-year-old is being held on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm at a nightclub in Mayfair, central London, in February 2023.
He flew into Manchester Airport on a private jet on Wednesday afternoon, according to The Sun.
File pic: Invision/AP
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said: “A 36-year-old man was arrested at a hotel in Manchester shortly after 02:00hrs on Thursday, 15 May on suspicion of grievous bodily harm.
“He has been taken into custody where he remains.
“The arrest relates to an incident at a venue in Hanover Square on 19 February 2023.
“The investigation is being led by detectives from the Central West Area Basic Command Unit.”
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The singer is set to go on tour in the UK in June and July.
Sky News has approached his representatives for comment.
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