The man who attacked Salman Rushdie in August 2022 has been charged with providing material support to Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based and Iran-backed terrorist organization.
Hadi Matar, who stormed the stage at the Chautauqua Institution just before Rushdie began a lecture and stabbed the author multiple times, blinding him in one eye, faces federal prosecution after previously rejecting a state-level offer of a shorter sentence in exchange for a guilty plea on the charges of attempted murder and assault.
The investigation into Matar’s attack has hinged on questions of whether the assailant had worked in concert with Shia Islamist groups. Rushdie has been the subject of a fatwa from former Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini since 1989, a year after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses. The novel, which Rushdie expected to offend a small number of imams, caused controversy among the Muslim world for perceived blasphemy.
Matar said after being arrested that he believes Khomeini was “a great person” but that he was not in contact with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
In the aftermath of the attack, the Islamic Republic pinned blame for the stabbing squarely on Rushdie’s shoulders.
“We, in the incident of the attack on Salman Rushdie in the U.S., do not consider that anyone deserves blame and accusations except him and his supporters,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said. “In this regard, no one can blame the Islamic Republic of Iran. We believe that the insults made and the support he received was an insult against followers of all religions.”
At the time of the stabbing, an Iranian religious foundation had offered a $3 million reward for Rushdie’s killer, and others associated with The Satanic Verses have been attacked in the years since the fatwa.
Hitoshi Igarashi, who translated the novel in to Japanese, was murdered in the wake of Khomeini’s fatwa, and the novel’s Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, was shot and seriously injured in 1993.