Prosecutors to lay out attempted murder case against man accused of Salman Rushdie attack | Salman Rushdie

Prosecutors are to lay out their framework of their case against Hadi Matar, the man accused of attacking author Salman Rushdie, on Monday in a case that has attracted the world’s media to the small town of Mayville in western New York state.

Matar, a 27-year-old Lebanese-American, is facing charges of attempted murder and assault in the stabbing attack on the author on stage at an arts festival in August 2022. The 77-year-old Rushdie was grievously injured in the attack and lost sight in one eye.

Jurors in Chautauqua county court will hear that Matar, from Fairview, New Jersey, allegedly staked out the Chautauqua Institution ahead of Rushdie’s visit. Prosecutors will probably focus on circumstances of the attack and not the alleged assailant’s religious motivations.

In a jailhouse interview soon after he was detained, Matar told the New York Post he had only read two pages of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, which initiated a fatwa against the author issued by Iran’s then-leader Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989.

Matar, who has pleaded not guilty and will be tried on federal terrorism-related charges at a later date, told the outlet that he believed Rushdie had “attacked Islam.”

Rushdie, who lived with security protection in London for decade before moving to New York to live under less constrained circumstances, wrote in Knife, a meditative account of the attack, that he does not regret the earlier novel.

“I am proud of the work I’ve done, and that very much includes The Satanic Verses. If anyone’s looking for remorse, you can stop reading right here,” he wrote.

But ahead of the incident, he dreamed of being attacked by a gladiator with a spear in a Roman amphitheater. He later said he thought, “Don’t be silly. It’s a dream.”

But he also questioned his apparent passivity under the violent onslaught.

“Why didn’t I fight? Why didn’t I run? I just stood there like a pinata and let him smash me,” Rushdie wrote in Knife. “It didn’t feel dramatic, or particularly awful. It just felt probable … matter-of-fact.”