A federal jury has convicted Hadi Matar on three terrorism-related charges for the 2022 stabbing of novelist Salman Rushdie, adding a second criminal judgment to a case that already produced a lengthy state prison term. The verdict shifts the legal focus from the physical assault to the government's case that Matar acted in support of Hezbollah and tried to carry out a decades-old fatwa.
Jurors in Buffalo found Matar guilty of transnational terrorism, attempting to provide material support to Hezbollah and providing material support to terrorists. Deliberations lasted roughly two hours before guilty findings were announced across the indictment. The decision came on Wednesday, July 29, 2026, following a federal trial that had opened the previous Tuesday.
Matar, 28, is a U.S. citizen from Fairview, New Jersey. He is already serving a 25-year state sentence imposed after a New York jury convicted him of attempted murder in 2025. Federal sentencing is scheduled for November 3, and the terrorism convictions carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Federal Trial Examined the Motive Behind the Stabbing
Prosecutors tied Matar's motive to the 1989 fatwa issued after the publication of Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. Evidence presented at trial described more than a year of research into the edict within what prosecutors characterized as a two-year period of planning. A Hezbollah address delivered in 2006 became another part of the government's motive evidence. The speaker, then leading the group, urged that the fatwa be carried out. Videos made by Matar were also played for the jury.
The attack occurred while Rushdie was preparing to speak at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York. On the stand, Rushdie counted 15 knife wounds. He identified his cheek, chest, eye, neck and thigh among the places struck. He lost sight in his right eye, suffered internal injuries and sustained damage to his left hand. Emergency surgery and months of recovery followed. He credited a firefighter at the venue with medical care that helped save his life. Rushdie lifted the darkened lens on his glasses to show jurors the eye injury, then described how narrowly the blade had missed his brain.
Defense attorneys disputed the terrorism theory and argued that the stabbing was not motivated by support for a terrorist organization. They also questioned Rushdie about the controversy surrounding his novel. Rushdie rejected the suggestion that the book itself belonged at the center of the proceeding, while the jury ultimately accepted the federal case on all three terrorism-related counts.
The state and federal prosecutions addressed different parts of the same event. New York's case established criminal responsibility for the attempted killing and produced the prison term Matar is serving now. The federal case asked jurors to decide whether the attack also met terrorism statutes through its alleged connection to Hezbollah and the fatwa.
The second verdict does different legal work. It adds a finding about purpose and organizational support to the record of the knife attack. The two judgments now describe both what Matar did on the Chautauqua stage and why federal prosecutors said he did it, using different laws and evidence to answer those questions.
The evidence connected events spread across nearly four decades. The Satanic Verses was published in 1988 and the fatwa followed in 1989, after Iran's religious leader condemned the novel as blasphemous. Rushdie then spent nine years in hiding. Prosecutors treated the 2006 Hezbollah speech as a later influence on Matar. The stabbing took place in 2022, the state conviction followed in 2025, and the federal jury completed the terrorism phase in 2026. Rushdie later chronicled the assault and his recovery in the memoir Knife.
November Sentencing Will Measure the Federal Verdict's Added Weight
Matar's existing sentence means the next hearing concerns additional federal punishment rather than whether he will first enter prison. A life term is the statutory maximum reported for the new convictions, not a sentence already imposed. The November 3 proceeding will convert the jury's findings into a federal judgment. The attempted-murder judgment records the attack and Rushdie's wounds. The federal verdict separately classifies Matar's conduct through terrorism and material-support laws. Sentencing will determine the punishment attached to that second conclusion.