Salman Rushdie attack suspect pleads not guilty to attempted murder,
assault
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[August 19, 2022]
By Tyler Clifford
MAYVILLE, N.Y. (Reuters) -The man accused
of stabbing novelist Salman Rushdie last week in western New York
pleaded not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and assault charges
on Thursday and was held without bail.
Hadi Matar, 24, is accused of wounding Rushdie, 75, on Friday just
before the "The Satanic Verses" author was to deliver a lecture on stage
at an educational retreat near Lake Erie. Rushdie was hospitalized with
serious injuries in what writers and politicians around the world
decried as an attack on the freedom of expression.
Matar was arraigned at the Chautauqua County Courthouse on an indictment
returned earlier in the day by a grand jury that charged him with one
count of second-degree attempted murder, which carries a maximum
sentence of 25 years in prison, and one count of second-degree assault.
He has been in jail since his arrest and wore a gray-striped jumpsuit, a
white COVID-19 face mask and his hands were shackled.
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Judge David Foley ordered Matar to have no contact with Rushdie and
agreed to a request by his defense lawyer to issue a temporary gag order
barring the parties from discussing the case in the media. He said he
would consider the defense's request to release Matar on bail.
Matar will return for another hearing next month.
The attack came 33 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran's
supreme leader, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims
to assassinate Rushdie a few months after "The Satanic Verses" was
published. Some Muslims saw passages about the Prophet Muhammad as
blasphemous.
Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim Kashmiri family, has lived
with a bounty on his head, and spent nine years in hiding under British
police protection.
In 1998, Iran's pro-reform government of President Mohammad Khatami
distanced itself from the fatwa, saying the threat against Rushdie was
over.
But the multimillion-dollar bounty has since grown and the fatwa was
never lifted: Khomeini's successor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, was suspended from Twitter in 2019 for saying the fatwa
against Rushdie was "irrevocable."
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![](../images/081922PIX/news_h83.jpg)
Hadi Matar appears in court on charges
of attempted murder and assault on author Salman Rushdie, in
Mayville, New York, U.S., August 18, 2022. REUTERS/Lindsay DeDario
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In an interview published by the New York Post on Wednesday, Matar
said he respected Khomeini but would not say if he was inspired by
the fatwa. He said he had "read a couple of pages" of "The Satanic
Verses" and watched YouTube videos of the author.
"I don't like him very much," Matar said of Rushdie, as reported in
the Post. "He's someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their
beliefs, the belief systems."
Iran's foreign ministry said on Monday that Tehran should not be
accused of being involved in the attack. Matar is believed to have
acted alone, police have said.
Matar is a Shi'ite Muslim who was born in California to a family
from Lebanon.
Prosecutors say he travelled to Chautauqua Institution, a retreat
about 12 miles (19 km) from Lake Erie, where he bought a pass to
Rushdie's lecture.
Witnesses said there were no obvious security checks at the venue
and that Matar did not speak as he attacked the author. He was
arrested at the scene by a New York State Police trooper after being
wrestled to the ground by audience members.
Rushdie sustained severe injuries in the attack, including nerve
damage in his arm, wounds to his liver, and the likely loss of an
eye, his agent said. But his condition has been improving since the
weekend, and he was taken off a ventilator.
(Reporting by Tyler Clifford in Mayville, N.Y.; additional reporting
by Brendan O'Brien in Chicago; Editing by Frank McGurty, Bernadette
Baum, Deepa Babington and Daniel Wallis)
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