The tried homicide trial of the novel who allegedly repeatedly stabbed author Salman Rushdie at an upstate New York occasion two years in the past is lastly set to start out Tuesday.
The twice-delayed proceedings are scheduled to start with jury choice at 9:30 a.m. on the Chautauqua County Courthouse.
Prosecutors mentioned Rushdie, the creator of “Satanic Verses,” will take the stand in opposition to his accused attacker Hadi Matar, 26, through the trial.
Matar, of New Jersey, allegedly knifed Rushdie not less than 10 instances throughout a literary seminar on the Chautauqua Establishment in August 2022.
The 77-year-old novelist was left blind in a single eye and affected by nerve and liver harm.
The moderator for the occasion, Henry Reese, was additionally wounded within the assault.
“I don’t suppose he’s an excellent individual. I don’t like him,” Matar advised The Submit about Rushdie in an unique jailhouse interview days after the vicious assault.
“He’s somebody who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the idea methods.”
Rushdie spent years in hiding after late Iranian supreme chief Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini put a $3 million bounty on his head in 1989 over “The Satanic Verses,” which Muslims believed disparaged the Prophet Mohammed, calling the e-book blasphemous.
Rushdie started rising from his self-imposed exile within the Nineties, and has since appeared at talking engagements around the globe — together with the upstate occasion.
Matar, who was born within the US and has twin Lebanese citizenship, insisted he allegedly acted alone and solely learn “like two pages” of the controversial Rushdie novel.
He’s additionally dealing with separate federal terrorism prices in US District Court docket in Buffalo, to which he has pleaded not responsible.
Previous to the assault on Rushdie, Matar allegedly took a bus to Buffalo and a Lyft to Chautauqua, the place he purchased a ticket to the occasion and slept exterior the venue the night time earlier than, The Guardian reported.
As Rushdie addressed the gang, Matar allegedly rushed the stage and stabbed the creator earlier than surprised onlookers subdued him and he was arrested by police.
Matar, who has been locked up with out bail, pleaded not responsible to the tried homicide and assault prices. He beforehand turned down a plea deal for a 20-to-life state jail sentence, down from 25 years.
His trial on tried homicide and assault prices has twice been delayed, most lately in October when Matar’s lawyer sought to maneuver the trial to a different county.
The lawyer, Nathaniel Barone, argued the publicity across the high-profile case and the shortage of an Arab American group within the small upstate county meant his consumer wouldn’t get a good trial.
That transfer was denied, clearing the best way for the trial to start this week.
The proceedings are anticipated to final one month, with jury choice lasting about two weeks, prosecutors mentioned.
It’s not but clear when Rushdie will take the stand.
Rushdie in 2023 wrote concerning the near-fatal assault in a “Knife: Meditations After an Tried Homicide,” and known as it “fortunate” that he survived the assault.
“There’s such a factor as PTSD, you realize,” he advised the New Yorker in his first interview after the assault. I’ve discovered it very, very tough to jot down. I sit down to jot down, and nothing occurs. I write, but it surely’s a mixture of blankness and junk, stuff that I write and that I delete the following day.”
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