Prosecutors: Rushdie's Attacker Was a Terrorist for Hezbollah

A man who faces attempted murder charges in the frenzied knife attack on Salman Rushdie in 2022 was motivated by a Hezbollah leader's endorsement of a fatwa calling for the author's death, prosecutors said Wednesday in announcing new terrorism counts. The three-count indictment unsealed in US District Court in Buffalo offered for the first time a potential motive for the 2022 attack in western New York on the author of The Satanic Verses. Hadi Matar, a US citizen from New Jersey, was attempting to carry out a fatwa, Assistant US Attorney Charles Kruly said. According to the prosecutor, Matar believed the call for Rushdie's death, first issued in 1989, was backed by the Lebanon-based militant group and endorsed in a 2006 speech by Hezbollah's secretary-general.

In attempting to kill Rushdie, Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a news release, "Hadi Matar committed an act of terrorism in the name of Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization aligned with the Iranian regime." Matar, who faces separate state charges of attempted murder and assault, pleaded not guilty to the new federal charges of terrorism transcending national boundaries, providing material support to terrorists, and attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Matar's attorney, Nathaniel Barone, said after the arraignment that the federal case will be far more complex than the state charges, which focus largely on the assault on Rushdie while he was onstage and about to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution. Matar, he said, "plans on proceeding with a vigorous defense and maintain his innocence."

The 26-year-old has been held without bail since the attack, during which Rushdie was stabbed more than a dozen times before a stunned audience of about 1,500 people. Knife wounds blinded Rushdie in one eye. The event moderator, Henry Reese, also was wounded. Earlier this month, Matar rejected an offer by state prosecutors to recommend a shorter prison sentence if he agreed to plead guilty to both state and the anticipated federal charges. Instead, both cases will proceed to trial separately. Jury selection in the state case is set for Oct. 15.

(More Salman Rushdie stories.)