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| Trial starts of man accused of attempted murder of Salman Rushdie | Trial starts of man accused of attempted murder of Salman Rushdie |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| Hadi Matar has pleaded not guilty to attacking British author with a knife while he was on stage at festival in 2022 | Hadi Matar has pleaded not guilty to attacking British author with a knife while he was on stage at festival in 2022 |
| Prosecutors are to lay out their framework of their case against Hadi Matar, the man accused of attacking the author Salman Rushdie, on Monday as his trial began in a case that has attracted the world’s media to the small town of Mayville in western New York state. | Prosecutors are to lay out their framework of their case against Hadi Matar, the man accused of attacking the author Salman Rushdie, on Monday as his trial began in a case that has attracted the world’s media to the small town of Mayville in western New York state. |
| Matar, a 27-year-old Lebanese American, is facing charges of attempted murder and assault in the stabbing attack on the author on stage at an arts festival in August 2022. The 77-year-old Rushdie was grievously injured in the attack and lost sight in one eye. | Matar, a 27-year-old Lebanese American, is facing charges of attempted murder and assault in the stabbing attack on the author on stage at an arts festival in August 2022. The 77-year-old Rushdie was grievously injured in the attack and lost sight in one eye. |
| As he entered the courtroom Matar said: “Free Palestine.” He was wearing a blue shirt. The trial was briefly thrown into question when the defense team revealed that Matar’s lead attorney, Nathaniel Barone, had been hospitalized overnight, but Judge David Foley denied a defense request to delay the start of the trial. | |
| In opening statements, the prosecutor Jason Schmidt told jurors in Chautauqua county courtthat Matar, from Fairview, New Jersey, had “come dangerously close to committing murder” when he assaulted Rushdie with a knife. | |
| Matar, Schmidt said, had approached Rushdie in a “direct and rapid manner” as he sat on the stage and began his assault “without hesitation, deliberately, forcefully, efficiently and with speed”. | |
| The attack, Schmidt continued, “came so fast and unexpectedly that he [Rushdie] continued to sit in his chair … he didn’t register what was happening”. The assault, he said, continued after Rushdie got up to run. Members of the audience tackled Matar and held him down until a state trooper patrolling nearby arrived. | |
| After a vivid description of the wounds Rushdie had received to his neck, face and abdomen, the prosecutor said, the author was rushed to a nearby trauma center where was found to be “losing blood so rapidly he was in hemorrhagic shock from blood loss”. | |
| Schmidt said anyone in Rushdie’s condition who had not received level one trauma care would have died. | |
| In a jailhouse interview soon after he was detained, Matar told the New York Post he had only read two pages of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, which initiated a fatwa against the author issued by Iran’s then leader Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. | In a jailhouse interview soon after he was detained, Matar told the New York Post he had only read two pages of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, which initiated a fatwa against the author issued by Iran’s then leader Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. |
| Matar, who has pleaded not guilty and will be tried on federal terrorism-related charges at a later date, told the outlet that he believed Rushdie had “attacked Islam”. | Matar, who has pleaded not guilty and will be tried on federal terrorism-related charges at a later date, told the outlet that he believed Rushdie had “attacked Islam”. |
| Rushdie, who lived with security protection in London for a decade before moving to New York to live under less constrained circumstances, wrote in Knife, a meditative account of the attack, that he does not regret the earlier novel. | Rushdie, who lived with security protection in London for a decade before moving to New York to live under less constrained circumstances, wrote in Knife, a meditative account of the attack, that he does not regret the earlier novel. |
| “I am proud of the work I’ve done, and that very much includes The Satanic Verses. If anyone’s looking for remorse, you can stop reading right here,” he wrote. | “I am proud of the work I’ve done, and that very much includes The Satanic Verses. If anyone’s looking for remorse, you can stop reading right here,” he wrote. |
| But ahead of the incident, he dreamed of being attacked by a gladiator with a spear in a Roman amphitheater. He later said he thought, “Don’t be silly. It’s a dream.” | But ahead of the incident, he dreamed of being attacked by a gladiator with a spear in a Roman amphitheater. He later said he thought, “Don’t be silly. It’s a dream.” |
| But he also questioned his apparent passivity under the violent onslaught. | But he also questioned his apparent passivity under the violent onslaught. |
| “Why didn’t I fight? Why didn’t I run? I just stood there like a piñata and let him smash me,” Rushdie wrote in Knife. “It didn’t feel dramatic, or particularly awful. It just felt probable … matter-of-fact.” | “Why didn’t I fight? Why didn’t I run? I just stood there like a piñata and let him smash me,” Rushdie wrote in Knife. “It didn’t feel dramatic, or particularly awful. It just felt probable … matter-of-fact.” |