Man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie rejects plea deal

Hadi Matar, the man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie two years ago, rejected a plea deal Tuesday that would have reduced his state prison sentence. Matar's attorney, Nathaniel Barone, said he didn't like part of the deal that would have exposed him to a federal terrorism charge, according to The Associated Press.

If Matar had accepted the deal, he would have served up to 20 years in prison; without the plea deal, he faces up to 25 years. The AP The deal also reportedly included a federal charge of attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization, which could carry an additional 20 years in prison. Matar, who was born in the United States but also holds Lebanese citizenship, has been held without bail since the stabbing in the summer of 2022.

Rushdie was giving a lecture at New York’s Chautauqua Institution when a man stormed the stage and stabbed the author more than a dozen times, blinding him in one eye. Authorities arrested and charged Matar, who was living in Fairview, New Jersey, that day. Matar’s mother noticed a change in her son after a trip to Lebanon, where he visited his father in 2018, according to The AP.

The depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in Rushdie's 1988 book, The Satanic Versessparked the ire of Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini, who issued a fatwa the following year calling for Rushdie's death. Khomeini died that year, and since only the person who issued a fatwa can retract it, by custom, some believe it still stands. The threat sent Rushdie into hiding for several years, a period he chronicled in his 2012 memoir, Joseph AntonMatar, who was 26, was born in the late 1990s, long after the fatwa was issued and Khomeini died.

“I respect the Ayatollah,” Matar said in a 2022 interview with The New York Post“I think he's a great person.” In the same interview, he said he had “read, like, two pages” of The Satanic Verses.

Rushdie detailed the attack in a new memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murderreleased earlier this year.