In 2022, Salman Rushdie was about to deliver a lecture before a live audience in western New York when a man ran towards him and plunged a knife into the author’s hand as he raised it in self-defense, the Associated Press reports. “After that there are many blows, to my neck, to my chest, to my eye, everywhere,” Rushdie recalled in a memoir that followed. “I feel my legs give way, and I fall.” In the coming week, Rushdie is expected to return to the same New York county to recount the experience as one of the first witnesses in the trial of Hadi Matar, the man charged with wielding the knife that day. Matar, 27, of Fairview, New Jersey, has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault. Under different circumstances, Rushdie’s book, which details his account of that day and his recovery, might offer important evidence in the Aug. 12, 2022, attack that left the 77-year-old blind in his right eye and his hand permanently damaged. But “this isn’t a back alley event that occurs unwitnessed in a dark alley,” said Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt following a pretrial hearing. “This is something that was recorded, it was witnessed live by thousands of people.”
Jurors will be shown video of the attack, as well as still pictures and documentation, Schmidt has said. An estimated 15 witnesses are expected to take the stand over the course of a trial that is projected to last several weeks, he said. Matar’s lawyer, Nathaniel Barone, has not detailed how he plans to defend his client against the charges. In a separate indictment, federal authorities allege that Matar was motivated by a terrorist organization’s endorsement of a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death. A separate trial on the federal charges — terrorism transcending national boundaries, providing material support to terrorists and attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization — will be scheduled in U.S. District Court in Buffalo. Rushdie spent years in hiding after the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued the fatwa in 1989 after publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims consider blasphemous.
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