Hadi Mata, the man who stabbed and partially blinded the novelist Salman Rushdie on stage at a New York Institute of Arts, was convicted on Friday of murder attempt.
Kill, 27, can be seen in the videos of the 2022 attack hurrying the stage of the Chautauqua institution while Rushdie was introduced to the audience for a talk about keeping writers safe from damage, some of which were shown to jury during the seven days of testimony.
Rushdie, 77, was stabbed with a knife several times on the head, neck, torso and left hand, blinding his right eye and damaging his liver and intestines, which requires emergency surgery and months of recovery.
The writer was one of the first to testify in the Chautauqua County Court in Mayville, calmly describing jurors how he believed he was going to die and showing them his blind eye by removing his shows adapted with a blackened right lens.
Kill was declared guilty of second degree murder attempt and second degree assault for stabbing Henry Reese, co -founder of the city of Asylum of Pittsburgh, a non -profit group that helps exile writers, who was making the talk with Rushdie that tomorrow.
He will be sentenced on April 23 and face up to 25 years in prison.
Speaking after the verdict, the district prosecutor of Chautauqua County, Jason Schmidt, praised the dozens of members of the audience who rushed to Rushdie’s help when he was attacked.
“The community of the Chautauqua institution, which I think saved Mr. Rushdie’s life when they intervened, I would tell you that all this community deserved fast justice here, and I’m glad we could achieve that for them.”
Nathaniel Barone, a public defender who represents to kill, said his client was disappointed by the verdict.
“The video, I think, was extremely harmful to kill,” Barone said outside the courtroom, referring to the video of the attack that was repeatedly shown to the jurors, sometimes in slow chamber. “It’s that old expression, a picture is worth a thousand words.”
Rushdie, who spent most of the 1990s hidden in the United Kingdom after receiving death threats for his 1988 novel The satanic versesHe was stabbed about 15 times, in the head, neck, torso and left hand, blinding his right eye and damaging the liver and intestines. The trauma doctors who treated him after he was transferred by plane to a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania, said he lost so much blood that he approached death.
After the knife assault, Mata told the New York Post about the possible intention behind the attack.
Killing, a double citizen of his natives of the United States and Lebanon, said in the interview that it was surprised that Rushdie had survived, the Mail reported.
Kill did not testify in his trial. His defense lawyers told the jurors that prosecutors had not demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt the necessary criminal intention to kill necessary for a conviction for attempted murder, and argued that he should have been accused of assault.
Kill also faces federal positions presented by prosecutors at the Office of the United States in the West of New York, accusing him of trying to assassinate Rushdie as an act of terrorism and to provide material support to the hezbollah armed group in Lebanon, which states United has designated as a terrorist organization.
Kill must face those charges in a separate trial in Buffalo.
