Salman Rushdie: trial of man accused of stabbing author begins

Novelist who spent most of the 1990s in hiding in the UK after receiving death threats over The Satanic Verses was stabbed about 15 times

British-American author Salman Rushdie appears at a literary event in New York in May 2023. AFP

Jurors heard how a knife attack on Salman Rushdie unfolded in a matter of seconds at a 2022 New York lecture and how close he came to death, in the prosecutor's opening statement on Monday at the trial of the man accused of trying to murder the author.

A poet introducing the talk on keeping writers safe from harm was barely into his second sentence when defendant Hadi Matar bounded on to the Chautauqua Institution open-air stage and made about 10 running steps towards a seated Rushdie, Chautauqua District Attorney Jason Schmidt told the jury.

"Without hesitation, upon reaching Mr Rushdie, he very deliberately and forcefully and efficiently at speed plunged the knife into Mr Rushdie over and over and over and over and over and over again," Mr Schmidt said.

Rushdie, who spent most of the 1990s in hiding in the UK after receiving death threats over his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, was stabbed about 15 times: in the head, neck, torso and left hand, blinding his right eye and damaging his liver and intestines.

The author, 77, is due to testify about his injuries at the Chautauqua County Court in Mayville, New York, a few kilometres north of the Chautauqua Institution, which is a rural arts haven.

Mr Matar, 26, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault. The latter charge is for wounding Henry Reese – the co-founder of Pittsburgh's City of Asylum, a non-profit group that helps exiled writers – who was conducting the talk with Rushdie that morning. Mr Reese is also due to testify.

As he walked past the public gallery after entering the courtroom, dressed in a blue shirt and dark pants, before the jury was brought in, Mr Matar said: "Free Palestine, free Palestine."

Lynn Schaffer, a public defender representing him, told the jury in her opening statement that the prosecution would fail to prove the necessary element of intent beyond reasonable doubt.

Rushdie has published a memoir about the attack and his lengthy recuperation, in which he imagines a conversation with his assailant. He has said he believed he was going to die on the Chautauqua Institution's stage.

The author, who was raised in a Muslim Kashmiri family, went into hiding under the protection of British police in 1989 after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader, pronounced The Satanic Verses to be blasphemous.

Mr Khomeini's fatwa, or religious edict, called on Muslims to kill the novelist and anyone involved in the book's publication, leading to a multimillion-dollar bounty and the 1991 murder of Rushdie's Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi.

The jury has heard no mention of the fatwa or the threats against Rushdie. Mr Schmidt has said it is irrelevant to proving the crime of attempted murder took place.

The Iranian government said in 1998 it would no longer back the fatwa, and Rushdie ended his years as a recluse, becoming a fixture of literary gatherings in New York City, where he lives.

After the attack, Mr Matar told the New York Post that he had travelled from his home in New Jersey after seeing the Rushdie event advertised because he disliked the novelist, who he said had attacked Islam. Matar, a dual citizen of his native US and Lebanon, said in the interview he was surprised that Rushdie survived, the Post reported.

If convicted of attempted murder, Mr Matar faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.

He also faces federal charges brought by prosecutors in the US Attorney's office in western New York, accusing him of attempting to murder Rushdie as an act of terrorism and of providing material support to the armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon, which the US has designated as a terrorist organisation.

Mr Matar is due to face those charges at a trial in Buffalo.