Death Penalty News

US federal prosecutors said the man convicted of stabbing author Salman Rushdie contacted a person in Iran before the 2022 attack to confirm that the fatwa calling for Rushdie's death remained valid, the New York Times reported, as his federal terrorism trial opened on Wednesday. The trial in federal court in Buffalo will determine whether Hadi Matar acted independently out of religious anger or carried out the attack in response to the fatwa issued by Iran’s first Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini and in service of Lebanon's Hezbollah, according to the New York Times.

Hadi Matar, the man who severely injured novelist Salman Rushdie in a 2022 stabbing attack, was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison — the maximum for attempted murder. Matar, 27, was found guilty of second-degree attempted murder in February for his attack on the author at the nonprofit Chautauqua Institution in New York state in August 2022. A knife-wielding Matar leapt onto the stage where Rushdie was about to give a lecture, stabbing the author multiple times in the face, neck, arm, abdomen and eye.

MAYVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — A New Jersey man was convicted Friday of attempted murder for stabbing author Salman Rushdie multiple times on a New York lecture stage in 2022. Jurors delivered the verdict after deliberating for less than two hours, also finding Hadi Matar, 27, guilty of assault for wounding a man who was on the Chautauqua Institution stage with Rushdie at the time. Matar ran up to Rushdie as he was about to speak on Aug. 12, 2022, and stabbed him more than a dozen times before a live audience. The attack left the 77-year-old prizewinning novelist blind in one eye.

The man charged with stabbing writer Sir Salman Rushdie is facing trial in the US, with jury selection starting on Tuesday. Hadi Matar is charged with attempted murder and assault over the August 2022 incident that left Mr Rushdie blind in one eye. Mr Matar, 27, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The trial at Chautauqua County Court in New York state, which was delayed twice, will reportedly see Mr Rushdie give evidence and face the accused in court.

The author, who went into hiding for a decade after Iran’s leader called for his death, spoke of his recovery after being stabbed multiple times last August. Salman Rushdie said he feels overwhelmingly grateful and eager to keep writing, saying “you can’t regret your life,” in his first interview since surviving last summer’s brutal stabbing attack. “I’m lucky. What I really want to say is that my main overwhelming feeling is gratitude,” he told The New Yorker while continuing to recover, both physically and mentally, after being stabbed more than a dozen times during a literary event in western New York.

NEW YORK (AP) — Salman Rushdie’s agent says the author has lost sight in one eye and the use of a hand as he recovers from an attack from a man who rushed the stage at an August literary event in western New York, according to a published report. Literary agent Andrew Wylie told the Spanish language newspaper El Pais in an article published Saturday that Rushdie suffered three serious wounds to his neck and 15 more wounds to his chest and torso in the attack that took away sight in an eye and left a hand incapacitated. Rushdie, 75, spent years in hiding after Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a 1989 edict, a fatwa, calling for his death after publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims consider blasphemous.  Over the past two decades, Rushdie has traveled freely. Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey, has been incarcerated after pleading not guilty to attempted murder and assault in the Aug. 12 attack on Rushdie as he was being introduced at the Chau...

MAYVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — The man charged with stabbing Salman Rushdie on a lecture stage in western New York said in an interview that he was surprised to learn the accomplished author had survived the attack. Speaking to the New York Post from jail, Hadi Matar said he decided to see Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institution after he saw a tweet last winter about the writer's planned appearance. “I don’t like the person. I don’t think he’s a very good person,” Matar told the newspaper. “He’s someone who attacked Islam. He attacked their beliefs, the belief systems.” Matar, 24, said he considered late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini “a great person” but wouldn't say whether he was following a fatwa, or edict, issued by Khomeini in Iran in 1989 that called for Rushdie’s death after the author published “The Satanic Verses.” Iran has denied involvement in the attack. Matar, who lives in Fairview, New Jersey, said he hadn't had any contact with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard....

Salman Rushdie's agent has said "the news is not good" after the author was stabbed at an event in New York state. He was attacked on stage, and is now on a ventilator and unable to speak, Andrew Wylie said in a statement, adding that the author, 75, may lose one eye. Mr Rushdie has suffered years of Islamist death threats after writing The Satanic Verses, published in 1988. Police detained a suspect named as Hadi Matar, 24, from Fairview, New Jersey. New York State Police said the suspect ran onto the stage and attacked Mr Rushdie and an interviewer at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York state. Mr Rushdie was stabbed at least once in the neck and in the abdomen, authorities said. He was taken to a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania, by helicopter. "Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged," his agent said. No motive or charges have yet been confirmed by police, who are in the process of ob...

It has been a month since Asia Bibi was acquitted of blasphemy, but her ordeal is far from over. A Christian woman who spent nine years in prison for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad under Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy law, which carries the death penalty, Bibi is now in hiding in a government safe house along with her husband, Ashiq Masih. “We’re afraid,” said Joseph Nadeem, who serves as the guardian of two of Bibi’s daughters while she lives in secret. “In recent days, the Islamists have fired at the gate of our home. We are constantly receiving threats and on more than one occasion we have been followed.” Exoneration in a blasphemy case in Pakistan rarely means one can start afresh. Instead, those acquitted of the charges face persecution from religious groups that refuse to recognise the jurisdiction of the courts. Often, they must leave the country. But following countrywide protests by religious extremists after the 31st October verdict, Prime Min...

Pakistan has released the purported blasphemer against Islam. Now what nation will have the courage to grant her asylum? Asia Bibi, the Catholic mother imprisoned in Pakistan for nine years and condemned to hang for violating that country’s strict blasphemy law, has drawn broad sympathy throughout the West. Lacking credible evidence, and despite her denials, lower courts plainly yielded to Islamist pressure in making the illiterate field hand the first Pakistani woman to be given a death sentence for insulting Islam’s prophet, Mohammed. Then on October 31, Bibi finally received justice in an acquittal by Pakistan’s supreme court. But when she was released a week later, she found that mobs were baying for her blood throughout Pakistan — and, most surprisingly, that the West held out no firm offer of a safe haven. Islamabad has given assurances that Bibi has been taken to a secret, secure location inside Pakistan, pending a permanent place of refuge. But her escape seems stall...

A fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie's assassination was issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989. NCRI - According to the terrorist Quds Force Tasnim news agency on February 19, participants in the fourth exhibition called digital media of the Islamic Revolution, on the occasion of the anniversary of Khomeini's apostasy verdict against Salman Rushdie, determined the award of more than one billion Toman for his death. Tasnim further reminded a quote from Khomeini in this regard who at the time said: “I fear 10 years from now, some analysts want to question this verdict against diplomatic principles.” So to prevent disremembering of that verdict was the main reason that participants in this exhibition determined the one billion Toman award for anyone who kills Rushdie. The prize of one billion and eighty-one million Toman ( almost 300000 dollars) is funded by by more than 40 governmental and non-governmental institutions. It i...

Blasphemy law supporters, Pakistan Shaan Taseer was condemned after recording Christmas message that was critical of the country's law Shaan Taseer, the son of a prominent Pakistani politician assassinated over blasphemy allegations, is himself now the target of a police case and a fatwa calling for his killing after he recorded a Christmas message criticizing the country's blasphemy law. Mr. Taseer, a human-rights activist, was condemned in the religious edict by an Islamic group from the country's mainstream religious tradition, after he recorded the message for Pakistan's Christian minority. In the video message, he called the country's blasphemy law "inhumane" and expressed sympathy for Asia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death by Pakistan's courts on blasphemy charges. In Pakistan, blasphemy is illegal and it carries the death penalty. Activists say that the threat of being accused of blasphemy has created a climate of f...

Salman Rushdie TEHRAN — A group of hard-line Iranian news media organizations says it has raised $600,000 to add to a bounty for the killing of the British novelist Salman Rushdie. Iran’s former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, in 1989 calling for Mr. Rushdie to be killed because of his book “The Satanic Verses,” which the ayatollah found to be blasphemous and insulting toward Muslims. Mr. Rushdie has since then been living largely out of sight and under the protection of bodyguards. The semiofficial Fars news agency, one of the organizations involved, reported that the new reward money was gathered during a trade fair called the Islamic Republic’s Digital Media Exhibition. It quoted the secretary of the exhibition saying that the $600,000 had been announced last week to mark the anniversary of the 1989 fatwa. The Iranian government distanced itself from calls for Mr. Rushdie’s death under former President Mohammad Khatam...

Salman Rushdie The death sentence issued in 1989 by Khomeini against British author Salman Rushdie remains in force and only Ali Khamenei, the regime's Supreme Leader can rescind it, a senior cleric has declared. Mohsen Gharavian said: "Salman Rushdie is a mercenary of the world arrogance ... Years has passed since Khomeini made the ruling but the decree continues to remain live and valid and no one except the person in the position of Velayat-e faqih can rescind it." The death verdict against Salman Rushdie was issued by the Iranian regime's founder, Khomeini, for writing a novel. Cleric Mohsen Gharavian made the remarks in the city of Qum on the anniversary of the death verdict, state-run news agency ISNA reported. In December 1990, 2 days after Rushdie renounced his novel, Ali Khamenei, the then and current Supreme Leader of the regime issued a statement describing Rushdie as an apostate. Ali Khamenei said that Khomeini ruled before his de...