Washington:
Public Prosecutors In the process of the man who was accused of attacking Salman Rushdie, jury members told Monday that the author “dangerously close to dying” came in a crazy attack that made him blindly blindly.
Hadi Matar, a 27-year-old Lebanese-American who said “Vrij Palestine” while he was led to court, is accused of attempted murder and abuse during the attack on 12 August 2022 during an art event in the west of the state of New York .
Matar is accused of stabbing Rushdie about 10 times with a knife, leaving it in a serious state and without sight in his right eye.
Public Prosecutor Jason Schmidt told how Rushdie, who has been dealing with ‘The Satanic Verses’ in 1988 since the release of his novel’ The Satanic Verses, had just taken his seat in the amphitheater for around 1,000 people.
“A young medium build man who wears a dark colored face mask … appeared at the back of the theater,” said Schmidt. “Once on stage, he quickly accelerated in a full-out run.”
“(Matar) powerfully and efficiently and with speed the knife plunges the knife in Mr Rushdie again and again in the Lord Rushdie … waving, in the head, the neck, the belly, the upper thigh of Mr Rushdie swing.”
Schmidt said that Rushdie lifted his hands to defend himself, but stayed after several strokes had landed.
“The satanic verses” was blasted by the highest leader of Iran, and the writer born in India, an American -based American, has long been confronted with security risks.
– ‘attacked Islam’? –
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini published a Fatwa or Religious Edict in 1989, in 1989 Muslims called all over the world to kill Rushdie.
Hezbollah endorsed the Fatwa, said the FBI, and Matar is confronted with a separate prosecution in the federal court for terrorist charges.
Matar, who wore a blue shirt and often granted his five-member legal team in the graceful courtroom on Monday, previously told the New York Post that he had only read two pages of Rushdie’s Roman, but believed that the author “had attacked Islam “.
Rushdie, now 77, suffered several stab wounds before attendees and guards were able to subject the attacker, later identified by the police as Matar.
Matar came “dangerously close to the killing of Rushdie, Schmidt claimed, reported that he stabbed the author with such cruelty through the right eye” that it broke the optical nerve. “
Rushdie’s apple was also partially torn and his liver and small intestine penetrated.
“His blood pressure was low that he lost so much blood,” said the public prosecutor.
– Living under Fatwa –
One of Matar’s lawyers, Lynn Schaffer, said in an opening argument interrupted Super Bowl references and periods of coughs that prosecutors would try to present the case as “simple – open and closed”.
“Note the assumptions that the witnesses of the police make … How does that color the way they investigate this case?” she said. “They take things on Mr Matar who influence the way they investigate.”
A great media display has gathered in the small resort city of Mayville in the lake near the Canadian border to follow the process.
Matar’s defense team was looking for a delay in the case because his primary lawyer was admitted to the hospital, but judge David Foley denied that.
Matar’s side had previously tried to have the process from Mayville moved, near where Rushdie was attacked, with a fair trial of the 12 jury members and four alternatives that were recruited from the local area were impossible.
Rushdie lived the first decade in seclusion in London in London after the Fatwa was published, but in the last 20 years – until the attack – he lived a relatively normal life in New York.
He was not in court on Monday.
Last year he published a memoir called “Knife” in which he told the near-death experience.
“Why didn’t I fight? Why didn’t I walk? I was just there,” wrote Rushdie.
Iran denied every link to the attacker – but said that only Rushdie was to blame for the incident.
“I am proud of the work I did, and that includes a lot of ‘the satanic verses’. If someone is looking for regrets, you can stop reading here,” Rushdie wrote.
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)