Man Charged With Stabbing Salman Rushdie In 2022 Faces New Federal Charges

A man who severely injured author Salman Rushdie in a knife attack in 2022 was motivated by a Hizballah leader's endorsement of a fatwa calling for Rushdie's death, prosecutors said on July 24. A new indictment of Hadi Matar, a U.S. citizen from New Jersey, said he was attempting to carry out a fatwa. The prosecutor said in a news release that Matar believed the call for the Iranian-born author's death, first issued in 1989, was backed by the Lebanon-based militant group Hizballah and endorsed in a 2006 speech by the group’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said that in attempting to murder Rushdie, Matar "committed an act of terrorism in the name of Hizballah, a designated terrorist organization aligned with the Iranian regime.” Matar, who faces separate state charges of attempted murder and assault, pleaded not guilty to the new federal charges. To read the U.S. Justice Department news release, click here.