Salman Rushdie could give evidence in trial of alleged attacker – US prosecutor
The author was left blinded in his right eye and with a damaged left hand after the attack.
Author Sir Salman Rushdie could give evidence against the man charged with repeatedly stabbing him when the trial takes place early next year, a US prosecutor said.
“He is on the people’s witness list right now heading into trial,” Chautauqua County district attorney Jason Schmidt said, following a court hearing in which the judge scheduled the trial for January 8.
Hadi Matar, 25, has pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and attempted murder.
Authorities said the New Jersey resident left the audience and rushed on to the stage where the The Satanic Verses author was about to speak in August 2022, stabbing him more than a dozen times before onlookers intervened.
Sir Salman, 76, who was left blinded in his right eye and with a damaged left hand, wrote about the attack in a memoir, Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder” due out on April 16.
Matar has been in custody since immediately after the attack at the Chautauqua Institution, an arts and intellectual retreat in the rural south-west corner of New York state.
“I think the biggest hurdle for all of us is going to be picking a fair and impartial jury,” Mr Schmidt said. He estimated the trial would last two weeks or less.
Sir Salman was the target of a decades-old fatwa by the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for his death over alleged blasphemy in The Satanic Verses.
