La Jornada: New trial for attack on Salman Rushdie, this time for terrorism

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 as an act of terrorism.

Prosecutors said Hadi Matar attacked the celebrated author and free speech advocate in 2022 to try to comply with a decades-old fatwa, or religious ruling, calling for Rushdie’s death for what some Muslims considered blasphemy in his 1988 novel. The satanic verses.

“The purpose was to comply with the fatwa; that is what Hadi Matar intended to do,” said federal prosecutor Timothy Lynch in his opening statement in federal court in Buffalo, New York, about 110 kilometers from the artistic and intellectual retreat where Rushdie was attacked. The perpetrator is due to testify this week about the stabbing that nearly killed him and left him blind in one eye.

Defense attorney Nathaniel Barone urged jurors to keep an open mind about the case, which hinges not only on actions but motivation.

“You will have to ask yourself: what was Hadi Matar’s intention?” said Barone in his opening.

Matar, 28, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges, which include participating in an act of transnational terrorism. He took notes on a yellow legal pad and rarely looked at the jurors during opening statements; At times he moved around in his swivel chair. He is currently serving a 25-year sentence in a New York state prison for attempted murder and assault; for the audience he was wearing dress pants and a shirt that looked too big.

Rushdie, now 79, was stabbed repeatedly before a horrified audience at the Chautauqua Institution, where he was about to speak on safety measures for writers. He recounted the attack and his long recovery during Matar’s previous trial, in a memoir and in multiple interviews.

“What happens when you see death up close – as close as you can get without actually doing the dance of death and disappearing into nothingness – stays with you,” he declared in 2024. “There is a shadow.”

The first case against Matar focused on the details of the stabbing, while the federal one delves deeper into what the motive was. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

Prosecutors have maintained that he acted out of loyalty to Iran’s theocratic government and the Lebanese group Hezbollah after then-Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini called for Rushdie’s death over his 1988 novel. The satanic verses.

Matar’s electronic devices included information about the fatwa against Rushdie, and he kept a diary and sticky notes recording his investigation of the author, as well as possible ways and places to kill him, prosecutors said in a 2025 court filing. In Matar’s bedroom in New Jersey, federal agents found photos of Khomeini and his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to the document.

“When he attempted to comply with the fatwa, he believed he was doing so on behalf of” Hezbollah, which the U.S. government designates as a terrorist organization, Lynch and fellow federal prosecutor Charles Kruly wrote in the document.

In the years before the trial, Matar’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to exclude some evidence from his social media accounts and other digital activity, arguing that the government’s electronic searches had been too broad.

Matar refused to testify at his state trial and it is unclear whether he will testify in federal court. At his sentencing in state court, Matar said he believed in free speech but maintained that Rushdie was “a hypocrite” who “wants to intimidate other people.”

Matar also spoke out in support of the Palestinians as he entered and left the state court.

Born in the United States to parents who emigrated from Lebanon, Matar is a citizen of both countries. His mother has said he became taciturn and withdrawn after a trip to Lebanon in 2018, where Hezbollah is based.

Rushdie was born in India, raised in Great Britain and is now also an American citizen. He won the Booker Prize in 1981 for The midnight children, magical realism novel about a personal and national journey that begins the moment India became independent.