An American man already serving 25 years in prison for attempting to kill Sir Salman Rushdie has been found guilty of additional charges, including providing material support to a terrorist group.

Hadi Matar was convicted Wednesday in federal court in New York of providing assistance to Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed faction designated as a terrorist group by the United States, the United Kingdom and many other countries.

Prosecutors argued that Matar was motivated by a fatwa, a religious edict, issued by Iran’s religious leader in 1989 over Rushdie’s death.

The award-winning author testified during the trial, describing the attack and crediting a firefighter with saving his life by providing him with medical care.

The jury convicted Matar of participating in an act of transnational terrorism and providing material support to Hezbollah.

During the trial in the New York city of Buffalo, prosecutors argued that he was motivated by a 2006 speech by the then leader of Hezbollah, in which he called for the fatwa against Sir Salman to be carried out, and that he planned the attack for two years.

“The defendant decided that no one was going to do it, so he had to do it,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Lynch said in his closing statement, according to The Buffalo News., external.

“The defendant is the one who responded to that call.”

They also played videos made by Matar, 28, and interviewed Sir Salman in the witness box about being stabbed 15 times, including in the cheek, chest, eye, neck and thigh.

“I was on stage, lying down, with a huge pool of blood around me,” he testified, adding: “It was a huge, expansive lake of blood.”

He also raised the dark lenses of his glasses to reveal the wound in his eye, which left him partially blind, and said the attacker’s knife came “within millimeters of my brain.”

Defense attorneys argued that Matar’s attack was not motivated by terrorism and asked the author whether he should have expected a violent reaction to his controversial 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses.

“I don’t think the book is on trial,” Rushdie responded. “Someone else is on trial.”

Matar is already serving a 25-year sentence after being convicted of attempted murder by a state court in 2025. He could now face life in prison on the federal sentence.