Salman Rushdie knife attack suspect goes on trial

The man charged with stabbing writer Sir Salman Rushdie is facing trial in the US, with jury selection starting on Tuesday.

Hadi Matar is charged with attempted murder and assault over the August 2022 incident that left Mr Rushdie blind in one eye.

Mr Matar, 27, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The trial at Chautauqua County Court in New York state, which was delayed twice, will reportedly see Mr Rushdie give evidence and face the accused in court.

It had originally been scheduled to begin in January 2024 but Mr Matar’s defence team appealed for the trial to be delayed on the grounds that Mr Rushdie’s then upcoming book – a memoir about the attack – could be used as evidence and the defendant’s team wished to review its contents first.

Then in October, the trial was placed on hold after Mr Matar’s legal team made a request to move the trial to another county.

As reported by the New York Post, Mr Matar’s lawyers argued the defendant risked an unfair trial at the Chautauqua County Court in Mayville, given the publicity around the high-profile case and the lack of an Arab-American community in the small county.

The request was unsuccessful and the trial began in Chautauqua County Court – which is in a village with a population of about 1,500 people – as originally planned.

In August 2022, the Indian-born British-American author was put on a ventilator and spent six weeks in hospital after being stabbed up to 10 times on stage at an event in New York state.

Mr Matar, who was 24 at the time, is accused of sprinting on stage and carrying out the attack.

The injuries resulted in damage to Mr Rushdie’s liver, lost vision in one eye and a paralysed hand caused by nerve damage to his arm.

The Satanic Verses author previously told BBC Newshour he was unsure if he wanted to face his alleged attacker in court.

“I’m in two minds about it,” he said. “There’s one bit of me that actually wants to go and stand on the court and look at him and there’s another bit of me that just can’t be bothered.”

Henry Reese, moderator of the event Mr Rushdie was attending at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York state, was also injured in the attack.

Separate to the Chautauqua County Court charges, Mr Matar was charged by a federal court with providing material support to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, according to an indictment unsealed last July.

Hezbollah is designated a terrorist organisation by Western states, Israel, Gulf Arab countries and the Arab League.

Mr Rushdie, now 77, is an acclaimed writer who previously spent several years in hiding after the 1988 publication of The Satanic Verses – a fictional story inspired by the life of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad – triggered threats against his life.

The surrealist, post-modern novel sparked outrage among some Muslims, who considered its content to be blasphemous – insulting to a religion or god – and was banned in some countries.

A year after the book’s release, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini called for Mr Rushdie’s execution. He offered a $3m (£2.5m) reward in a fatwa – a legal decree issued by an Islamic religious leader.