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Hadi Matar, the man who severely injured novelist Salman Rushdie in a 2022 stabbing attack, was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison — the maximum for attempted murder.

Matar, 27, was found guilty of second-degree murder in February for his attack on the author at the nonprofit Chautauqua Institution in New York state in August 2022. A knife-wielding Matar leapt onto the stage where Rushdie was about to give a lecture, stabbing the author multiple times in the face, neck, arm, abdomen and eye. 

The assault left Rushdie, now 77, partially blind and with permanent nerve damage. The author did not return to the Chautauqua County court in Mayville, N.Y., for the sentencing, but did submit a victim impact statement.

Judge David Foley also sentenced Matar to 7 years, to be served concurrently, for injuring the moderator who tried to stop the attack.

published in 1988, sparked angry protests in the Muslim world over its 

of the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Months before his death in 1989, Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a religious fatwa calling for Rushdie's murder.

At trial, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of New York alleged Matar was acting on the fatwa

Matar, who lived in Fairview, N.J., at the time of the attack, has not cited the religious decree as motivation, but has 

 in a jailhouse interview that the author had attacked Islam. In the same interview, Matar admitted that he had read only about two pages of 

Rushdie himself testified at the February trial, telling the jury that the assailant struck him repeatedly. The novelist described being taken by surprise in the attack and then suddenly becoming aware of "a very large quantity of blood pouring out onto my clothes."

Matar's defense team argued that it wasn't an open-and-shut case. "Something very bad did happen," attorney Lynn Schaffer acknowledged at the trial, adding that the prosecution was required "to prove much more than that."

Matar also faces federal terrorism charges

Matar faces a separate trial on federal charges of terrorism in connection with the attack on Rushdie. 

When the charges were filed last July, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray said Matar "attempted to carry out a fatwa endorsed by [Hezbollah] that called for the death of Salman Rushdie — a fatwa issued in 1989 by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini." If convicted on the federal charges — which include providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill a U.S. citizen — Matar faces life in prison. A trial date hasn't been set.

The award-winning Rushdie, who is an Indian-born British-American citizen, has written numerous books. Besides 

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

Crime, Law and Justice

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Hadi Matar got the maximum sentence for attempted murder. He was found guilty in February for repeatedly stabbing author Salman Rushdie during a 2022 lecture and wounding another person on stage.

Man who attacked author Salman Rushdie is sentenced to 25 years in prison

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