Key Points
- Hadi Matar has pleaded not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and assault charges
- He's accused of wounding Salman Rushdie on Friday in a knife attack
A man accused of stabbing novelist Salman Rushdie in western New York has pleaded not guilty to second-degree attempted murder and assault charges during an arraignment hearing and held without bail.
Hadi Matar, 24, is accused of wounding Rushdie, 75, on Friday just before the The Satanic Verses author was to deliver a lecture on stage at an educational retreat near Lake Erie.
Rushdie was hospitalised with serious injuries in what writers and politicians around the world decried as an attack on the freedom of expression.
Matar was arraigned during a brief hearing in Chautauqua County district court on Thursday on an indictment returned earlier in the day by a grand jury that charged him with one count of second-degree attempted murder and one count of second-degree assault.
The attack came 33 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims to assassinate Rushdie a few months after "The Satanic Verses" was published. Some Muslims saw passages about the Prophet Muhammad as blasphemous.
Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim Kashmiri family, has lived with a bounty on his head, and spent nine years in hiding under British police protection.
In 1998, Iran's pro-reform government of President Mohammad Khatami distanced itself from the fatwa, saying the threat against Rushdie was over. But the multimillion-dollar bounty has since grown and the fatwa was never lifted: Khomeini's successor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was suspended from Twitter in 2019 for saying the fatwa against Rushdie was "irrevocable."
Salman Rushdie was hospitalised last week with serious injuries in what writers and politicians around the world decried as an attack on the freedom of expression. Credit: Evan Agostini/AP
"I don't like him very much," Matar said of Rushdie, as reported in the Post. "He's someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems."
Iran's foreign ministry on Monday said that Tehran should not be accused of being involved in the attack. Matar is believed to have acted alone, police have said.
Matar is a Shi'ite Muslim who was born in California to a family from Lebanon.
Prosecutors say he travelled to Chautauqua Institution, a retreat about 19 km from Lake Erie, where he bought a pass to Rushdie's lecture.
Witnesses said there were no obvious security checks at the lecture venue and that Matar did not speak as he attacked the author. He was arrested at the scene by a New York State Police trooper after being wrestled to the ground by audience members.
Rushdie sustained severe injuries in the attack, including nerve damage in his arm, wounds to his liver, and the likely loss of an eye, his agent said.
