Author Salman Rushdie attending a photocall ahead of the presentation of Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder in Berlin on May 16. PHOTO: REUTERS

– An American-Lebanese man was sentenced to 25 years in prison on May 16 for trying to kill novelist Salman Rushdie in a 2022 knife attack at a New York cultural centre.

Hadi Matar, 27, was convicted in February of attempted murder and assault for the stabbing, which left Rushdie blind in one eye.

Matar received the maximum sentence of 25 years for the attack on Rushdie and seven years for assault on another attendee at the speaking event. The sentences are to run concurrently.

Rushdie, a British-American, told jurors about Matar “stabbing and slashing” him 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 read only two pages of Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, but believed the author had “attacked Islam”.

Matar’s lawyers had sought to prevent witnesses from characterising Rushdie as a victim of persecution following the 1989 fatwa by Iran’s then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, which called for his murder over supposed blasphemy in the novel.

Iran has denied any link to the attacker and said only Rushdie was to blame for the incident.

The optical nerve of Rushdie’s right eye was severed in the attack.

His Adam’s apple was lacerated, his liver and small bowel penetrated, and he became paralysed in one hand after suffering severe nerve damage to his arm.

Rushdie was rescued from Matar by bystanders. In 2024, he published a memoir called Knife, recounting the near-death experience.

Rushdie, who was born in Mumbai but moved to England as a boy, was propelled into the spotlight with his second novel Midnight’s Children (1981), which won Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize for its portrayal of post-independence India.

Hadi Matar, the man accused in the attempted murder of British author Salman Rushdie, appears in court. PHOTO: AFP

But The Satanic Verses brought him far greater, mostly unwelcome, attention.

Rushdie became the centre of a fierce tug-of-war between free speech advocates and those who insisted that insulting religion, particularly Islam, was unacceptable under any circumstance.

Books and bookshops were torched, his Japanese translator was murdered and his Norwegian publisher was shot several times.

Rushdie lived in seclusion in London for a decade after the 1989 fatwa, but for the past 20 years – until the attack – he lived relatively normally in New York. AFP

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LONDON (AP) — A man armed with a samurai sword who murdered a London boy on his way to school during a rampage that seriously injured five other people was sentenced Friday to life in prison.

Marcus Arduini Monzo was condemned as “wicked” by Daniel Anjorin’s father, who described the agony of finding his 14-year-old son crumpled in a pool of blood outside their home shortly after he’d left for school on April 30, 2024.

“It has been the worst nightmare experience of our lives,” Dr. Ebenezer Anjorin said during the sentencing in the Central Criminal Court. “To have to go through the pain of losing a child in such a cruel and savage way. No family should have to go through this.”

Monzo, 37, was convicted Wednesday of Anjorin’s murder, along with three counts of attempted murder and one count each of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, aggravated burglary and possessing a bladed article.

Justice Joel Bennathan set the scene of the crime on the streets of east London, where he said people had just set out for work and children were headed to school, when Monzo plowed his van into a pedestrian and unleashed a 20-minute frenzied attack that came to an end only after police used a stun gun to immobilize him.

“That peaceful, busy scene was devastated as members of the public were attacked, police officers were gravely injured, a couple were terrified in their own home, and a clever, talented, much-loved young boy was killed by a savage blow with a sword,” Bennathan said. “You, Marcos Arduini Monzo, did all of that.”

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Prosecutors said that drug use triggered the psychotic episode that turned violent when Monzo killed his cat, Wizard, after voices in his head told him the pet was sapping his energy and he needed to kill and eat it.

Before he could do that, though, he said he was overcome by feeling that Armageddon was imminent and he left his home in his van for his parent’s house. On the way, he rammed his car into security guard Donato Iwule, who he attacked with the sword and said he was going to kill him. He slashed the man’s neck, but Iwule was able to get away.

Monzo then ambushed Anjorin, who was wearing headphones, and didn’t hear a neighbor warning him of the swordsman.

“We were shouting and waving towards Daniel as he came out,” Aiste Dabasinskaite said after the attack. “It just happened right before our eyes, it was horrible.”

Monzo nearly beheaded the teen with the 2-foot (60-centimeter) blade and stabbed him as he lay on the ground.

When police officers arrived and tried to help the boy, Monzo sprang from bushes nearby and bolted. Constable Yasmin Mechem-Whitfield gave chase and suffered what police said were “brutal and life-changing” injuries including a fractured skull and severe nerve damage when he lunged at her.

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Monzo then broke into a nearby home, where he awoke a couple who had been sleeping with their 4-year-old daughter. He shouted about believing in God and attacked the girl’s father, wounding his neck and arm.

In his final act of violence, he struck police Inspector Moloy Campbell once with the sword before he was subdued with a stun gun and arrested.

Jurors determined Monzo was responsible for his actions after prosecutors argued that the attack was caused by his cannabis use, rather than an underlying mental health condition.

Monzo, who has dual Spanish and Brazilian citizenship, said that an injury from mixed martial arts had led him on a spiritual quest and he consumed ayahuasca, a hallucinogen, and frequently smoked marijuana.

Prosecutors said Monzo had an interest in violence, far-right extremism and conspiracy theories. He had shared vaccine misinformation and liked social media posts on X praising Adolf Hitler.

Monzo told jurors he believed that the Earth was flat and that the 9/11 attack was “probably” a conspiracy. He also spoke about his practice of drinking his own urine.

June 2025 update: In our latest update, we felt compelled to add the scariest smash of 2025, Ryan Coogler’s genre-blending vampire blockbuster Sinners. Beyond its box office receipts, which far outstripped expectations, it’s an act of large-scale cinematic daring we expect audiences to continue revisiting for many years to come.

For a long time, horror was cinema’s most misunderstood genre. In the 1970s and ’80s, it was a vehicle for quick cash-ins to stock the emerging home video market, creating a flood of cheaply made, formulaic junk that sent buckets of blood flying at the screen and piles of dead teenagers to the morgue. Sure, there were the acknowledged classics – The Shining, The Exorcist, Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, etc – but for the most part, ‘horror’ became a euphemism for ‘schlock’.

That’s changed completely. Between the output of A24, the movies of Jordan Peele and surprise hits from The Substance to Sinners, horror has become one of the most bankable movie genres, leading to a reappraisal of the genre’s past. But as this list of the greatest horror movies ever made shows, the genre never truly needed such validation – because if the whole point of film is to make you feel something, nothing can conjure visceral reactions more than a good horror flick. Among our picks, you’ll find psychological terrors that probe deep, universal human fears and traditional slashers that jab at our most elemental instincts for survival. Some are transgressive, violent and gory, yes, but others will leave you rattled using nothing more than shadows and suggestions. There is, after all, more than one way to scare someone – and these movies do it better than all others.

Written by Tom Huddleston, Cath Clarke, Dave Calhoun, Nigel Floyd, Phil de Semlyen, David Ehrlich, Joshua Rothkopf, Nigel Floyd, Andy Kryza, Alim Kheraj and Matthew Singer

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A man has been jailed for at least 40 years for the “wicked” murder of the schoolboy Daniel Anjorin during a 20-minute rampage in east London.

Marcus Arduini Monzo, 37, fatally slashed Daniel with a samurai sword minutes after the 14-year-old left his home in Hainault on 30 April last year.

In a televised sentencing, Mr Justice Bennathan jailed Monzo for life with a minimum term of 40 years for murder, and for attacking three other members of the public and two police officers.

The judge described a “peaceful, busy scene” being “devastated as members of the public were attacked, police officers were gravely injured, a couple were terrified in their own home, and a clever, talented, much-loved young boy was killed by a savage blow with a sword. You, Marcos Arduini Monzo, did all of that.”

Earlier, Daniel’s father, Ebenezer Anjorin, had condemned Monzo’s “wicked” actions and described losing his son as his “worst nightmare”.

View image in fullscreen Daniel Anjorin. Photograph: Metropolitan police/PA

Speaking publicly about it for the first time, Anjorin described the moment he saw his fatally injured son lying in the street. “I did not realise that it was Daniel at first but, as I got closer, I recognised the school sports clothes and saw his face. He was lying in a pool of blood and had a deep cut to his face running from the side of his mouth to the back of his neck. He was motionless. I knew at once that he was dead, but I reached down, called his name and held his head.”

After a few minutes, he said, he called Daniel’s mother, who screamed and cried when she arrived home and saw paramedics trying to resuscitate her son, who died later in hospital.

Anjorin said he could not begin to describe the “pain and anguish” the family felt at losing Daniel, who was academically gifted and enjoyed sports and music.

“We will not see him get married or have children. All the normal things parents hope for their children. All these hopes and aspirations have been cruelly snatched away from us through the wicked actions of Marcus Monzo. It has been the worst nightmare experience of our lives. To have to go through the pain of losing a child in such a cruel and savage way. No family should have to go through this.”

In his sentencing, Bennathan said the police officers involved “behaved with exemplary courage and put their lives on the line to protect the public they served”. He also paid tribute to the “calm dignified” manner of Daniel’s relatives throughout the trial, and said no sentence would “begin to temper” their grief.

Speaking outside court afterwards, the boy’s parents, Grace and Ebenezer, agreed, saying: “No verdict or sentence can bring back our son Daniel, who we loved so dearly, but we are grateful that justice has been served.”

They added: “His life had so much potential ahead. He was gifted academically, was kind and had a generous spirit that touched everyone who knew him … We honour Daniel’s memory not in the shadow of this tragedy but through the love and happiness that he brought to us and all those who knew him.”

The court had heard Monzo drove his van into Donato Iwule, who ran away screaming as the attacker got out of the vehicle and came at him with a sword. Monzo then attacked Daniel from behind, causing unsurvivable neck injuries.

When PC Yasmin Mechem-Whitfield tried to detain Monzo, he repeatedly struck her with “savage” blows, causing severe injuries. He burst into the home of Henry De Los Rios Polania and Sindy Arias, who had been asleep with their young child nearby. Insp Moloy Campbell cornered Monzo in a car park and ran in with his baton raised but was slashed on the hand.

Officers eventually detained the delivery driver, who had become psychotic after taking cannabis.

Afterwards, Monzo, who had viewed far-right and misogynistic content on social media, claimed to have an alternate persona of a “professional assassin”.

A jury in his Old Bailey trial found Monzo guilty of Daniel’s murder, and the attempted murder of Iwule, Arias and Mechem-Whitfield. He was convicted of wounding De Los Rios Polania and Campbell with intent. He was also convicted of aggravated burglary and having an article with a blade or point. He admitted possessing the samurai sword used to kill Daniel and a katana sword found in his van.

As far back as anyone can remember, the movies have loved gangsters – and it’s not hard to understand why. Who hasn’t fantasised about living outside the law, of having money and influence, of being untouchable? Sure, all the immoral behaviour is a bit unsavory, and the crushing paranoia that comes along with the lifestyle seems like a major drawback. But getting to live vicariously through the criminals we see on screen is one of cinema’s purest thrills.

But not all movie gangsters are built the same. Some are loud and boisterous, others cold, calculating and unreadable. From fedora-sporting mobsters to pistol-packing yakuza enforcers, to street-level bosses whose empire only extends to the end of the block, cinema has seen them all and told their stories – and you’ll find all of them on our definitive list of the best gangster movies of all-time.

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