Salman Rushdie’s Attacker Found Guilty of Aiding a Foreign Terror Group

A man who stabbed the author Salman Rushdie more than a dozen times was found guilty on Wednesday of aiding a foreign terrorist group and carrying out the orders of the Iranian government, which had called for Mr. Rushdie’s death more than three decades ago.

Hadi Matar, a young man who had been enraged by Mr. Rushdie’s work, rushed onstage at a retreat in western New York in August 2022 and stabbed him repeatedly. Mr. Rushdie survived the attack, but was left with severe nerve damage and blind in his right eye.

Mr. Matar was convicted of attempted murder in state court last year and sentenced to 25 years in prison. On Wednesday, Mr. Matar, 28, was convicted of providing material support to a terrorist group and committing an act of terrorism that transcended national boundaries.

The verdict, which was reached by a federal jury in Buffalo after just two hours of deliberation, means Mr. Matar could spend the rest of his life in prison. He is set to be sentenced in November.

Mr. Matar showed no response in the marble-and-wood courtroom as the verdict was read aloud. He kept his head lowered, his chair swaying slowly from side to side.

Nathaniel L. Barone II, a lawyer for Mr. Matar, said afterward that he was disappointed with the verdict, which he said he would appeal. The current war with Iran, he said, presented an inherent challenge in convincing jurors of Mr. Matar’s innocence

There was no debate over whether Mr. Matar had attacked Mr. Rushdie on that day. The trial, which lasted one week, centered on Mr. Matar’s motives: Prosecutors had to convince jurors that he had committed an act of terror and supplied material support to a known terrorist organization.

In 1989, the government of Iran issued a fatwa, or religious edict, against Mr. Rushdie over his novel “The Satanic Verses.” The book included a fictionalized depiction of the Prophet Muhammad, which outraged many Muslims.

In 2022, decades after the fatwa was issued, Mr. Matar, a 24-year-old American citizen with Lebanese heritage, was angry. A recluse who turned to Islam after a trip to the Middle East years earlier, Mr. Matar had grown furious with Mr. Rushdie’s work.

Mr. Matar never contacted anyone with Hezbollah. Yet prosecutors argued that without the fatwa, Mr. Matar would not have been compelled to attack Mr. Rushdie. They presented his notes and composition books, which frequently mentioned the importance of carrying out the fatwa and his pursuit of Mr. Rushdie. In a composition book, he wrote, with bullets before each entry, “We need to kill him ASAP,” “finally get this over with,” and “beginning of Jihad.”

Mr. Barone argued that prosecutors had no insight into Mr. Matar’s motivations, which the lawyer said were personal and religious. Though Mr. Matar was deeply troubled by “The Satanic Verses,” he had not been carrying out the wishes of Hezbollah or Iran’s government when he attacked Mr. Rushdie, Mr. Barone said.

“Hadi Matar acted completely independently and free of any coordination or control from Hezbollah,” Mr. Barone told jurors.

On Aug. 12, 2022, Mr. Rushdie arrived at the Chautauqua Institution, a cultural retreat, to deliver a talk on writers in exile. Before he was about to speak, Mr. Rushdie testified that he saw a man to his right whose face was obscured by a black mask. Suddenly, Mr. Rushdie was thrown to the ground.

Mr. Matar then repeatedly stabbed Mr. Rushdie, including his midsection, his left hand and his eye, piercing his optic nerve.

“I could feel the pain, and I yelled out, ‘What happened to my eye?’” Mr. Rushdie said.

Mr. Matar was subdued by audience members and arrested. Mr. Rushdie was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Erie, Pa., before he was moved to the NYU Langone Health Rusk Rehabilitation center in New York City, where he spent about a month.

Beyond the attack itself, prosecutors depicted Mr. Matar as a fanatical supporter of Hezbollah.

They showed jurors a selfie of Mr. Matar wearing a Hezbollah shirt and making a salute; an essay Mr. Matar wrote in which he praised the terrorist group; and a propaganda video he created that featured a 2006 speech from Hassan Nasrallah, then the leader of Hezbollah, and the voice of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini reading the fatwa.

At trial, prosecutors showed a photograph on his bedroom wall that depicted the Hezbollah fighter Ahmad Kassir, next to Iran’s first two supreme leaders. Photos of a Hezbollah fighter were found on his phone’s home screen, and two others were posted the morning of the attack.

Mr. Barone said the evidence was not sufficient to show Mr. Matar was working at the direction of a terrorist group.

“He also owned other T-shirts,” Mr. Barone said to an F.B.I. agent who was testifying. “Did you known he had a Captain America shirt? That didn’t make him a member of the Avengers, did it?”

In his closing remarks on Wednesday, Timothy C. Lynch, a federal prosecutor, told jurors that the evidence showed Mr. Matar had acted at the direction of Hezbollah, hoping to become one of its “martyrs.” The speech by Mr. Nasrallah was a clear “call to action,” he said.

“Mr. Matar was the one who was finally going to fulfill the fatwa,” Mr. Lynch said. “He wanted to be forever revered as a Hezbollah martyr.”