Hadi Matar, the 27-year-old man convicted of the brutal 2022 stabbing of acclaimed author Salman Rushdie, was sentenced on Friday to 25 years in prison.
The attack during a lecture in western New York left the prizewinning writer blind in one eye.
A jury had found Matar guilty in February of attempted murder and assault.
Rushdie, 77, did not attend the sentencing hearing but submitted a victim impact statement.
During the trial, he vividly recounted the moment the masked assailant repeatedly plunged a knife into his head and body as he was being introduced to speak about writer safety at the Chautauqua Institution.
Rushdie testified that he believed he was dying during the attack.
Before receiving his sentence, Matar, clad in jail attire and handcuffs, made a statement referencing freedom of speech and labeling Rushdie a "hypocrite" and a "bully" who "wants to disrespect other people."
Chautauqua county district attorney Jason Schmidt, who had requested the maximum sentence, argued that Matar "chose this" and "designed this attack so that he could inflict the most amount of damage" not only on Rushdie but also on the audience of 1,400 people.
Matar received the maximum 25-year sentence for the attempted murder of Rushdie and a concurrent sentence of seven years for wounding a man who was on stage with the author. Public defender Nathaniel Barone, while acknowledging
Matar's lack of prior criminal record, argued for a 12-year sentence and disputed the characterization of the audience as victims, stating the case had been an "international publicity sponge" with no presumption of innocence for Matar.
Rushdie spent 17 days in a Pennsylvania hospital and over three weeks in a New York City rehabilitation centre recovering from the attack. He detailed his arduous recovery in his 2024 memoir, "Knife."
Matar now faces a separate federal trial on terrorism-related charges. While the state trial focused on the details of the stabbing, the upcoming federal trial is expected to delve deeper into Matar's motive.
Authorities believe Matar, a US citizen, was attempting to carry out a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie's death, issued by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 following the publication of Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses, which some Muslims consider blasphemous.
Federal prosecutors have indicated that Matar believed the fatwa was supported by the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and endorsed by its secretary-general in a 2006 speech.
Matar has pleaded not guilty to federal charges including providing material to terrorists, attempting to provide material support to Hezbollah, and engaging in terrorism transcending national boundaries.
Video footage from the Chautauqua Institution played during the state trial showed Matar approaching Rushdie from behind and repeatedly stabbing him before being subdued by onlookers.
Jurors in the state trial deliberated for less than two hours before reaching a guilty verdict.
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