Hadi Matar found guilty of attempted murder.

Mayville, New York: Hadi Matar, the man who stabbed and partially blinded the novelist Salman Rushdie onstage at a New York arts institute, has been found guilty of attempted murder.

Matar, 27, can be seen in videos of the 2022 attack rushing onto the Chautauqua Institution’s stage as Rushdie was being introduced to the audience for a talk about keeping writers safe from harm, some of which were shown to the jury during the seven days of testimony.

Rushdie, 77, was stabbed with a knife multiple times in the head, neck, torso and left hand, blinding his right eye and damaging his liver and intestines, requiring emergency surgery and months of recovery. He spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital and more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation centre. He detailed his long and painful recovery in his 2024 memoir Knife.

The writer, who has been famous worldwide since the novel Midnight’s Children was published more than 40 years ago, was among the first to testify at the Chautauqua County Court in Mayville, calmly describing to jurors how he believed he was going to die and showing them his blinded eye by removing his adapted spectacles with a blacked-out right lens.

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On Friday, Matar was found guilty of attempted murder in the second degree as well as assault in the second degree for stabbing Henry Reese, the co-founder of Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum, a non-profit group that helps exiled writers, who was conducting the talk with Rushdie that morning.

Matar will be sentenced on April 23, and faces up to 25 years in prison.

Speaking after the verdict, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt praised the scores of audience members who rushed to Rushdie’s aid when he was attacked.

“The Chautauqua Institution community, which I believe saved Mr Rushdie’s life when they intervened, I would say to you that this entire community deserved swift justice here, and I’m glad that we were able to achieve that for them.”