Transcript of Man found guilty of attempted murder of Salman Rushdie | BBC News

A 27-year-old man who stabbed the novelist, Sir Salman Rushdie, in New York in 2022, has been found guilty of attempted murder. The attack left the writer blind in his right eye. Let's get the very latest on that with our North America correspondent, Nomi Iqbal, who joins me now and has been following the trial. Nomi, just bring us up to date.

Well, this attack happened, as you mentioned, in 2022. Sir Salman Rushdie was at the Chetak Iqa institution in Southwestern New York. He was on stage, ironically, giving a talk about how to keep writers safe. Now, 27-year-old Haddi Matar was in the audience. He had purchased a ticket to go to the event, but he rushed onto stage and attacked Mr. Rushdie multiple times. The author had to be airlifted to hospital. It took him weeks to recover, and he chronicled the incident in his latest book. Now, in terms of this trial, it took less than two weeks, and it took less than two hours for the jury come back with their verdict. I was in court when Sir Salman himself took to the stand, and he went into vivid description of what happened that day, and he removed his glasses to show the jury how he'd lost his eye. Now, this was never a case of whodunit. This incident had been witnessed by many people in the audience. They gave evidence at the trial. It was also livestreamed, the event, and so people saw it online. The prosecutions The case was quite clear-cut. The defense had argued that Haddine Matar, that the prosecution hadn't proven the intent, that Haddine Matar had gone to the event, and that this was more of a chaotic incident, not a premeditated attack.

But that was rejected by the jury. As I said, it took less than two hours to come back with their verdict. Matar will be sentenced at a later date. He's facing up to 32 years in jail.

And, Nourmia, you were saying that you were there when Sir Salmon took to the stand, and he really vividly describes the attack on him and also how those injuries he's still living with.

He is. He lost one eye. He has also lost the movement in a hand, and he suffered multiple organ damage. He even said during the evidence that he gave that he thought he was going to die. In his book, he also talked about that incident, just the story of Mr. Rushdie, which many people might know or others might not. He lived in fear for nearly a decade after a fatwa was issued against him by the then-Iranian leader in 1989. This was after his 1988 book came out Satanic verses in which he was accused of insulting Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. He had said even two weeks before the attack that he wanted to live a relatively normal life, that he didn't want to have security around him all the time. Then this incident, two weeks later happening, talked about how he had always feared that this potentially could have happened. I want to add that Hadim Matar has never talked about his motivation of exactly why he attacked Mr. Rushdie. Also to mention that he is facing a separate federal case, and this involves terrorism charges, where Mr. Matar is accused of providing material support and resources to the Lebanese militant group Hezbala from September 2020 in an attempt to carry out that fatwa that was issued in 1989.

Mr. Mataar has denied those charges.

Okay, Nami, thank you very much for bringing us up to date.