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Man who stabbed Salman Rushdie sentenced to 25 years in prison

Hadi Matar was convicted of attempted murder for 2022 attack that left writer blind in his right eye

“He designed this attack so that he could inflict the most amount of damage, not just upon Mr Rushdie, but upon this community, upon the 1,400 people who were there to watch it,” Schmidt said, adding that Matar in effect “chose this” maximum sentencing. Photograph: Gene J Puskar/APMatar’s motivation for trying to kill Rushdie stemmed from a 2006 speech delivered by Hezbollah’s chief at the time, Hassan Nasrallah, according to a federal indictment. In his speech, Nasrallah endorsed a decades-old fatwa, or death warrant, placed on Rushdie by Iranian religious leaders more than 35 years ago as a result of his novel, The Satanic Verses.

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