NEW YORK: The man who was convicted of trying to kill Salman Rushdie went on trial again Wednesday, this time in a federal case that casts the stabbing on a lecture stage as an act of terrorism.
Prosecutors said Hadi Matar attacked the renowned author and free-speech advocate in 2022 to try to carry out a decades-old fatwa, or religious ruling, calling for Rushdie’s death over what some Muslims saw as blasphemy in his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses.”
“Fulfill the fatwa — that’s what Hadi Matar intended to do,” Assistant US Attorney Timothy Lynch said in an opening statement at a federal courthouse in Buffalo, New York, about 70 miles (110 km) from the arts and intellectual retreat where Rushdie was assaulted. The Booker Prize-winning author is expected to testify later this week about the stabbing that nearly killed him and left him blind in one eye.
Prosecutors said Matar’s writings, communications and other materials showed he acted out of loyalty to Iran’s theocratic government and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group; Iran’s late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued the fatwa.
Defense attorney Nathaniel Barone urged jurors to keep their minds open.
