Salman Rushdie's attacker sentenced to 25 years in prison

Hadi Matar has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the attempted murder of author Salman Rushdie.

The 27-year-old was sentenced at a court in Chautauqua County, New York on Friday, almost three months after he was convicted of attempted murder and assault.

Matar stabbed Rushdie, now 77, multiple times in the face and neck while he was on stage speaking at a literary event in August 2022. The incident left Rushdie severely wounded and blind in his right eye.

In a statement to the court before his sentencing, Matar said, "Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people... He wants to be a bully, he wants to bully other people. I don't agree with that."

Matar was also sentenced to seven years for injuring Ralph Henry Reese, who was moderating Rushdie's lecture. Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt ruled that the sentences must run concurrently as the victims were wounded in the same incident.

The Midnight's Children writer was not present in court for the sentencing hearing on Friday, but he took to the stand to testify during the trial in February.

"Everything happened very quickly. I was stabbed repeatedly, and most painfully in my eye. I struggled to get away. I held up my hand in self-defence and was stabbed through that," he said at the time.

"I became aware of a great quantity of blood I was lying in. My sense of time was quite cloudy, I was in pain from my eye and hand, and it occurred to me quite clearly I was dying."

The attack occurred after Rushdie spent years in hiding because of threats to his life after his novel The Satanic Verses was published in 1988.