Verdict on Salman Rushdie's assailant: 25 years behind bars.

The American judiciary sentenced Hadi Matar to 25 years in prison for the infamous attack on the British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie in 2022, which left Rushdie partially blind and caused a global uproar. The criminal court in Chautauqua County in Mayville, New York, convicted the 27-year-old Matar of second-degree attempted murder for rushing onto the stage during a literary talk given by Rushdie at Chautauqua Institute for the Arts, repeatedly stabbing him in front of the audience, also injuring another man engaged in the dialogue. A video shown to the jury during the trial captured the brutal attack, with Matar swiftly advancing towards Rushdie, stabbing him multiple times before the audience intervened. The attack also injured Henry Rees, co-founder of the non-profit initiative "City of Refuge" in Pittsburgh, which supports exiled writers worldwide, as he was in conversation with Rushdie during the event. The district attorney, Jason Schmidt, stated after the verdict that Rushdie still suffers severe psychological and physical effects from the incident, emphasizing that "what he went through was a real shock." He had begun to reappear publicly after years of hiding following the fatwa issued by the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 calling for his death due to his novel "The Satanic Verses," deemed blasphemous by Iran. Schmidt clarified that the sentence also included an additional 7-year prison term for Matar for stabbing Henry Rees, to be served concurrently with the main 25-year sentence. Matar's lawyer, Nathaniel Baron, announced that his client intends to appeal the verdict. The case is far from over, as Matar also faces a series of other federal charges brought by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Western New York, including attempting to murder Rushdie as part of a terrorist act and providing financial support to the Lebanese Hezbollah group classified as a terrorist organization by the United States. A separate trial is scheduled to address these charges in a court in Buffalo.