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.

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.

‘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.

Read more from Sky News:
Pope ‘not out of danger,’ doctors say
‘Severed hand’ found near school in Dublin

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.

Three brothers have been jailed after underage girls in Leeds and Barrow-in-Furness were sexually abused and raped over a number of years.

The trio were convicted in October last year, with the abuse taking place between 1996 and 2010.

Shaha Amran Miah, 49, known as Jai; Shaha Alman Miah, 47, known as Ali; and Shah Joman Miah, 38, known as Sarj all pleaded not guilty.

Sarj has since admitted his crimes. However, the judge said it could be a cynical attempt for leniency and did not give him any credit.

They were sentenced on Friday to the following:

Shaha Amran Miah – life with a minimum term of 20 years and 338 days.

Shaha Alman Miah – 10 years in prison and four years on licence.

Shah Joman Miah – life with a minimum term of 21 years and 232 days.

Preston Crown Court heard Sarj and Jai regularly sexually abused two children at a Leeds mosque over many years, beginning when the victims were seven.

The three also preyed on vulnerable and underage girls at a flat above their family’s takeaway in Barrow, Cumbria, between 2008 and 2010.

They gave them cigarettes, alcohol, food and even hair extensions in what barrister Tim Evans KC called a “classic grooming technique”.

He said the brothers worked as a team and “created an environment in Barrow in which each of them could abuse young girls”.

Judge Unsworth KC said they had shattered the lives of their victims and hid in plain sight in the Cumbria town.

Multiple schoolgirls in their uniforms were regularly seen at the takeaway, the judge said, with Jai acting ruthlessly to stop them going to the police.

The court heard Sarj would take one of the girls to a hotel for sex about twice a month and became increasingly controlling – to the point she remains on medication and is terrified of seeing him in the street.

Read more from Sky News:
Woman who claimed to be Madeleine McCann charged with stalking
Boyfriend of murder victim Ashley Dale jailed in Liverpool

A witness told Sky News the men abused their victims in a dingy room above the takeaway that “looked like a crackhouse” and had mattresses on the floor and sheets covering the windows.

“They knew exactly how young they were,” she said. “They didn’t only have one girlfriend each… they had multiple.”

Shaha Amran Miah was found guilty of 16 sexual offences against three girls, including rape, as well as two charges of intimidation and one of kidnap.

Shaha Alman Miah was found guilty of three counts of sexual activity with a child.

Shah Joman Miah was convicted of sexually abusing three children. There were nine counts of rape of a child among his 40 offences.

Apple will no longer offer customers in the UK its most advanced, end-to-end security encryption feature for cloud data – following a security row with the government.

The Advanced Data Protection (ADP) tool is an optional feature which means only account holders can see things like photos or documents that they have stored online. Apple itself does not have access to the data.

However, the UK government reportedly requested the right to see the data earlier this month.

In response, Apple has removed the tool from use in the UK.

The company is switching it off as an option for those not already using it, and will introduce a process to move existing users away from it.

Security officials argue that encryption hinders criminal investigations, while tech firms defend it as essential to user privacy.

The loss of end-to-end encryption for iCloud backup means Apple would be able in some instances to read user data such as iMessages that would otherwise be protected and pass it on to authorities if legally compelled.

However, if a user has end-to-end encryption, Apple cannot read the data under any circumstances.

What has Apple said?

“We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP will not be available to our customers in the UK given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy,” Apple said in a statement.

“Enhancing the security of cloud storage with end-to-end encryption is more urgent than ever before.

“Apple remains committed to offering our users the highest level of security for their personal data and are hopeful that we will be able to do so in the future in the United Kingdom.”

Read more from science and technology:
How AI is being used to manipulate German voters
New prostate cancer screening trial announced
Donated placenta saved acid attack victim’s eye

Apple customers who already had the data protection tool turned on “will eventually need to disable this security feature”, said the company.

It is already unavailable for customers who weren’t using the feature, who now see a message reading: “Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in the United Kingdom to new users.”

What has the UK government said?

The government said it will not confirm or deny whether it requested a Technical Capability Notice (TCN), which is what would give it the right to see the encrypted data.

“We do not comment on operational matters, including for example confirming or denying the existence of any such notices,” a Home Office spokesperson told Sky News.

According to a Home Office source, however, even if a TCN was issued, it wouldn’t give the government blanket access to people’s data.

Separate authorisations or warrants would still be required.

What’s the reaction from the tech industry?

Many in the tech industry are shocked by Apple’s move, with Graeme Stewart from cybersecurity company Check Point saying it “is effectively smashing open Pandora’s box and hoping the chaos stays neatly inside”.

“At its heart, encryption isn’t just for criminals; it’s a shield for millions of law-abiding citizens, businesses, and critical infrastructure,” he said.

“Now we are prying open that door to our digital Fort Knox, there’s no telling what else might slip through.”

Apple was also described as “calling the government’s bluff” by Robert Peake who is the technology partner at Keystone Law, for refusing to create a backdoor into its protected data.

“The Government will face increasing pressure to back down on this, as it seriously undermines its recent attempts to portray the UK as a pro-innovation place to operate,” he said.