A man who tried to murder Sir Salman Rushdie by stabbing the author more than a dozen times has been convicted of terrorism. Sir Salman had a fatwa – a religious death warrant – placed on him in 1989 by Ayatollah Khomeini, the former Iranian supreme leader, because his novel The Satanic Verses, published the previous year, was considered blasphemous. But Sir Salman, an Iranian-born author who grew up in India and Britain, told the court: "I can't say what his ambitions or his aim was, but the wounds were dispersed across my body." Iran's government denied involvement in the 2022 stabbing, but at the time the foreign ministry suggested Sir Salman courted trouble by insulting Islam. Several other individuals faced assassination attempts over their links to the book, and Sir Salman was forced into hiding for nearly a decade afterwards, receiving round-the-clock protection.