Trial postponed for man accused of Salman Rushdie stabbing due to upcoming memoir
MAYVILLE, NY– The New Jersey man accused of stabbing The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie will be allowed to seek material related to Rushdie's upcoming memoir about the attack before he stands trial, a judge ruled Wednesday.
Jury selection in the attempted murder and assault trial against Hadi Matar was originally scheduled to begin on January 8.
Instead, the trial has been put on hold as Matar's lawyer argued on Tuesday that the suspect has the right under the law to see the manuscript, which is due out in April 2024, and associated materials before going to trial. Written or recorded statements about the attack by any witness are considered potential evidence, attorneys said.
“It will not change the ultimate outcome,” Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said of the delay. A new date has not yet been set.
Matar, 26, who lived in Fairview, New Jersey, has been held without bail since prosecutors said he stabbed Rushdie more than a dozen times after he went onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, where the author performed in August 2022 was about to speak.
Rushdie, 75, was blinded in his right eye and his left hand was damaged in the attack. The author announced in October 2023 that he had written about the attack in an upcoming memoir, “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.”
While preparations for the trial were underway at the time, the prosecutor said he requested a copy of the manuscript as part of the legal discovery process. The request, he said, was rejected by Rushdie's representatives, who cited intellectual property rights.
Attorney Nathaniel Barone is expected to subpoena the material.
Rushdie's literary agent did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Penguin Random House, the book's publisher, also did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The prosecutor on Tuesday downplayed the book's significance to the trial, noting that the attack was witnessed — and in some cases recorded — by a large, live audience.
On stage with Rushdie in western New York was Henry Reese – 73, co-founder of Pittsburgh's City of Asylum – who suffered a cut on his forehead.
Rushdie, who was able to testify at the trial, spent years in hiding after the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued an edict, a fatwa, in 1989 calling for his death following the publication of the novel “The Satanic Verses,” which is considered blasphemous by some Muslims. For the past twenty years, Rushdie has traveled freely.
A motive for the 2022 attack has not been disclosed. Matar praised Khomeini in a prison interview with The New York Post after his arrest, saying Rushdie was “attacking Islam.”