NEW YORK, May 16 (AFP): An American-Lebanese man will be sentenced on Friday for trying to kill novelist Salman Rushdie in a 2022 knife attack at a New York cultural centre.
Hadi Matar, 27, faces up to 25 years in prison after being convicted of attempted murder and assault charges in February this year.
During the trial, Rushdie told jurors about Matar "stabbing and slashing" him during an event at the upscale cultural centre. "It was a stab wound in my eye, intensely painful, after that I was screaming because of the pain," Rushdie said, adding that he was left in a "lake of blood."
Matar-who shouted pro-Palestinian slogans on several occasions during the trial-stabbed Rushdie about 10 times with a six-inch blade.
He previously told media he had only read two pages of Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses," but believed the author had "attacked Islam."
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