The man who stabbed and partially blinded novelist Salman Rushdie onstage at a Western New York arts institute in 2022 was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Friday (May 16) for an attack that also wounded a second man, the district attorney said. - REUTERS
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00:01The man who stabbed and partially blinded novelist Salman Rushdie on stage at a Western New York Arts Institute in 2022 was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Friday, the district attorney said.
00:15Hadi Mattar, a U.S. citizen from Fairview, New Jersey, was found guilty of attacking the author in February.
00:22Rushdie has faced death threats since the 1988 publication of his novel The Satanic Verses.
00:27Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader, denounced it as blasphemous, leading to a call for Rushdie's death, an edict known as swatwa.
00:37Here's Judge David Foley on Friday.
00:40Everybody's entitled to have different views and different opinions about things.
00:44And what is truly disturbing to me about this case more than anything is that your ideals, because you believe that Mr. Rushdie shouldn't be respected, justify the actions that you took at the Chittaguan institution.
01:02Video that captured the assault shows Mattar rushing the stage as Rushdie was being introduced at a talk about keeping writers safe from harm.
01:10Rushdie, an atheist born into a Muslim Kashmiri family in India, was stabbed with a knife multiple times.
01:17The attack blinded his right eye and he required emergency surgery and months of recovery.
01:22Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said Mattar was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the second-degree attempted murder charge of Rushdie.
01:32He received seven years for a second-degree assault charged for the stabbing of a second man hurt in the attack.
01:38The sentences will run concurrently.
01:41Now that we've completed the sentence, you know, we're happy and pleased to put this matter behind us.
01:48This August will be three years since this occurred.
01:51Mattar also faces federal charges brought by prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office in western New York,
01:57accusing him of attempting to murder Rushdie as an act of terrorism.
02:02Mattar is due to face those charges at a separate trial in Buffalo.