Salman Rushdie knife assault suspect goes on trial

The US trial of the person charged with stabbing author Sir Salman Rushdie two and a half years in the past is because of start on Tuesday after it was twice delayed.

Hadi Matar was charged with tried homicide and assault for the August 2022 assault that left Mr Rushdie blind in a single eye.

Mr Matar, 27, has pleaded not responsible to the costs.

The jury is because of be chosen on Tuesday at Chautauqua County Courtroom in New York. The trial will reportedly see Mr Rushdie give proof and face the accused in court docket.

It had initially been scheduled to start in January 2024 however Mr Matar’s defence group appealed for the trial to be delayed on the grounds that Mr Rushdie’s then upcoming e book – a memoir in regards to the assault – could possibly be used as proof and the defendant’s group wished to evaluate its contents first.

Then in October, the trial was positioned on maintain after Mr Matar’s authorized group made a request to maneuver the trial to a different county.

As reported by the New York Submit, Mr Matar’s attorneys argued the defendant risked an unfair trial on the Chautauqua County Courtroom in Mayfield, given the publicity across the high-profile case and the shortage of an Arab-American group within the small county.

The request was unsuccessful and the trial will happen in Chautauqua County as deliberate.

In August 2022, the Indian-born British-American writer was placed on a ventilator and spent six weeks in hospital after being stabbed as much as 10 instances on stage at an occasion in New York state.

Mr Matar, who was 24 on the time, is accused of sprinting on stage and finishing up the assault.

The accidents resulted in injury to Mr Rushdie’s liver, misplaced imaginative and prescient in a single eye and a paralysed hand brought on by nerve injury to his arm.

The Satanic Verses writer, who is because of seem in court docket through the trial, beforehand advised BBC Newshour he was uncertain if he needed to face his alleged attacker in court docket.

“I am in two minds about it,” he stated. “There’s one little bit of me that really desires to go and stand on the court docket and have a look at him and there is one other little bit of me that simply cannot be bothered.”

Henry Reese, moderator of the occasion Mr Rushdie was attending on the Chautauqua Establishment in western New York state, was additionally injured within the assault.

Separate to the Chautauqua County Courtroom prices, Mr Matar was charged by a federal court docket with offering materials assist to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, in response to an indictment unsealed final July.

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

Mr Rushdie, now 77, is an acclaimed author who beforehand spent a number of years in hiding after the 1988 publication of The Satanic Verses – a fictional story impressed by the lifetime of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad – triggered threats in opposition to his life.

The surrealist, post-modern novel sparked outrage amongst some Muslims, who thought of its content material to be blasphemous – insulting to a faith or god – and was banned in some nations.

A 12 months after the e book’s launch, Iran’s Supreme Chief Ayatollah Khomeini known as for Mr Rushdie’s execution. He provided a $3m (£2.5m) reward in a fatwa – a authorized decree issued by an Islamic non secular chief.