A federal jury in Buffalo, New York, convicted Hadi Matar on July 29, 2026, of providing material support to Hezbollah and committing an act of transnational terrorism — the first time his 2022 stabbing of novelist Salman Rushdie was formally tied to a terrorist organization in federal court (BBC News, New York Times). Matar, 28, had pleaded not guilty to the federal terrorism charges. The conviction on all three counts of the indictment carries a potential life sentence in federal prison, a steep increase from the 25-year state sentence he is already serving for attempted murder (BBC News, FBI Buffalo).

The attack took place on August 12, 2022, at a literary conference in Chautauqua, New York, where Rushdie was scheduled to speak. Matar rushed the stage and stabbed Rushdie 15 times, striking his cheek, chest, eye, neck, and thigh. The assault left the author partially blinded in one eye (BBC News, New York Times).

Matar, born and raised in the United States and a resident of Fairview, New Jersey, was 26 when federal terrorism charges were first filed against him in 2024 (Justice Department, Justice Department OPA). The federal case ran alongside a separate state prosecution in Chautauqua County court, where Matar faced charges of second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault. Rushdie, 77 at the time, testified at the state trial in February 2025. On February 21, 2025, Matar was found guilty of attempted murder and received the maximum sentence of 25 years (Reuters, Reuters, FBI Buffalo).

Rushdie also testified at the federal terrorism trial (PBS NewsHour). The prosecution's closing statement was delivered by Assistant US Attorney Timothy Lynch. Prosecutors argued that Matar was motivated by a 2006 speech by the then-leader of Hezbollah calling for the fatwa against Rushdie to be enforced (BBC News). That fatwa — a religious edict calling for Rushdie's death — was issued by Iran's religious leader in 1989, following the publication of Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. Hezbollah is designated as a terrorist organization by both the United States and the United Kingdom (BBC News).

The dual-track strategy here is worth pausing on. The state case secured a conviction and maximum sentence for the violent act itself, while the federal case addressed the broader question of terrorist motivation and organizational ties. To win a federal terrorism conviction, prosecutors had to convince the jury that Matar's attack was not merely a violent assault but an act of transnational terrorism. Their evidentiary bridge was the 2006 Hezbollah speech, in which the group's leadership directed that the death edict hanging over Rushdie since 1989 be carried out. That a speech nearly two decades old could serve as the connective tissue in a terrorism prosecution reveals the long shelf life of religious decrees as mobilizing tools. The Justice Department's willingness to pursue that chain of causation in open court signals a prosecutorial appetite for framing ideologically motivated violence against individuals through counterterrorism statutes, with all the enhanced sentencing exposure that entails.