Sir Salman Rushdie has said he is “pleased” that the man who stabbed him multiple times on stage received the maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. The 77-year-old Booker Prize-winning author gave evidence during the 2025 trial about the 2022 attack at the Chautauqua Institution in New York, which left him blind in one eye.
US citizen Hadi Matar was found guilty of attempted murder and assault in February and sentenced this month. He was also sentenced to seven years for wounding another man who was on stage with the writer at the time of the attack.
On Monday, Indian-born British author Sir Salman told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I was pleased that he got the maximum available, and I hope he uses it to reflect upon his deeds.” He also spoke about working with BBC producer Alan Yentob, who died on Saturday, on a 2024 BBC Two programme that featured an artificial intelligence (AI) creation, based on his fictional conversation with Matar that he recalled in his autobiography Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder.
Sir Salman said: “I thought if I was to really meet him, to ask him questions, I wouldn’t get very much out of him. I doubt that he would open his heart to me. And so I thought, ‘well, I could open it by myself. I’d probably do it better than a real conversation would’.”
He added: “(The AI animation) was very startling. I have to say it really certainly made a point.” Sir Salman called former BBC executive and TV presenter Yentob not just an “unbelievable champion of the arts”, but someone who has a “real gift for friendship”.
“He’s one of the giants of British media in the last generation,” he also said. “I think he will be remembered as a maker of great programmes and as an enabler of great programmes as well.”
Sir Salman recalled Yentob gave him his first break with a programme that saw Sir Ben Kingsley read his book Midnight’s Children before he won the Booker Prize, and the publication of his 1988 book The Satanic Verses. It was The Satanic Verses that saw Sir Salman accused of being blasphemous by hardline Muslims and prompted then Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa calling for his death in 1989.
He later spoofed himself and Yentob, when they appeared to arm wrestle on the BBC satirical programme W1A. Sir Salman also said that it was “horrendous” that the Kids Company controversy made him resign as the author added: “I think it needs to be said, repeatedly, (he was) completely exonerated, and so were all the other directors.”
Yentob served as chairman of the board of trustees for Kids Company, founded by Camila Batmanghelidjh, from 2003 until the collapse of the charity in 2015. He always insisted there was no conflict of interest in his decision to call Newsnight about its investigation into Kids Company and had not “abused my position at the BBC”.
During Yentob’s tenure at BBC2, Absolutely Fabulous, starring Jennifer Saunders and Dame Joanna Lumley, arts series The Late Show and Have I Got News For You, were commissioned. He also launched CBBC and CBeebies, commissioned Colin Firth-starring Pride And Prejudice, and in 2024 was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by the King for services to the arts and media.
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