‘Great Pain and Shock’: Salman Rushdie testifies to the trial of his suspicious attacker

On Tuesday, Salman Rushdie described in graphic details of the frantic moments of 2022, when a masked man rushed to him on stage in Western New York and repeatedly demolished him with a knife, leaving him with terrible injuries and fear that he would die.

Rushdie took the position of testimony on the trial of Hadi Matar, 27, who declared that he was not guilty of attempting murder and attack in an attack that also wounded another man. It was the first time since August 12, 2022, the 77-year-old author found himself in the same room with a man accused of trying to kill him.

Rushdie recalled “feeling” feeling of great pain and shock and aware of the fact that there was a huge amount of blood in which I was lying “after the attack at the Chautauqua-Neprofit and Educational Center institution about 120 kilometers south of Buffal, NY, where he was supposed to hold that day lecture.

“It occurred to me to die. That was my prevailing thought,” he said, adding that the people who underwent him the attacker probably saved his life.

While recounting the attack, his wife Rachel Eliza Griffiths cried from her place in the second row of the courtroom.

“I only saw him at the last minute,” Rushdie said of the man who rushed across the stage at the institution and repeatedly stabbed him with a 25 -centimeter (10 inches) knife.

“I was aware that someone was wearing black clothes, or a dark clothing and a black face mask. I was very hit because of his eyes, which were dark and looked very frantic.”

Rushdie said at first he thought the knife striker was hitting him with his fist.

“But I saw a large amount of blood falling on my clothes,” he said. “He hit me repeatedly. He hit and hit me.”

Rushdie said he had hit him repeatedly in his chest and torso and stabbed in his chest as he struggled to escape. He was blinded in an eye on the attack.

“I was very injured. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I fell,” he said.

Weekly recovery

Rushdie spent 17 days at Pennsylvania Hospital and more than three weeks at the New York Rehabilitation Center, where he had to learn basic skills again, such as squeezing toothpaste from the pipes. He posted in detail his months of recovery in the memoir published last year.

Although he said he “recovered significantly”, he still did not feel “100 percent”.

“I’m not as energetic as it used to be. I’m not as physically as strong as it used to be,” he said.

Matar, who sat about six meters from Rushdie in the courtroom, often watched during his testimony.

Starts cross -examination

Lynn Schaffer, a public defender who represented Matar, began her cross-examination by asking the author of Booker awarding about his career. The test was short, low and for a moment, friendly. Asked Rushdie if that would be surprised Bridget Jones diaryIn which he made Cameo, she was her favorite movie.

“I’m surprised,” Rushdie said, joked that this was his “most important work.”

The only hint of a possible defense strategy was the question of whether trauma could affect memories.

Rushdie admitted that he had false memory, that he thought he had stood up when he saw the attacker approaching, but that was not true.

Schaffer then caused him to remember how many times he had hit.

“I didn’t count then. Otherwise I was busy,” Rushdie replied. “But after that I could see them on my body. No one should have told me.”

No one asked Rushdie to identify his attacker in court, and he refused to interview as he left the courtroom after about an hour of testimony.

Later on Tuesday, Sheriff of Chautauqua Sheriff Jason Beichner identified Matar as an attacker he helped detained in Kululisj after the attack. He testified that Matar was calm and associate, while his clothes were disgusted and seemed to be blood on his hands.

Security was significantly firmer before Rushdie’s appearance, with several vehicles to implement the law parked outside the courtroom.

The trial is expected to last up to two weeks.

The jurors are unlikely to hear about Fatwa issued by the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who invites Rushdie’s death, said District Prosecutor Jason Schmidt. Rushdie, author Midnight children and A winning cityspent years hiding after Khomeini announced Fatwa in 1989 after the publication of his novel Satanic verseswhich is inspired by the life of the prophet Muhammad and which some Muslims consider blasphemous.

‘Not a case of a misleading identity’

Schmidt said that the discussion of Matar’s motive would be unnecessary in the state trial, given that the attack saw a living audience who expected Rushdie to give a lecture on guarding writers.

“This is not the case of the wrong identity,” Schmidt said during open statements on Monday. “Mr. Matar is a person who attacked Mr. Rushdie without provocation.”

Matar is a dual Lebanese American citizen. He was born in the US to parents who emigrated from Yaroun, southern Lebanon near the Israeli border, dominating Hezbollah, towards the mayor of the village. Matar’s mother said she believed her son was radicalized in 2018 when he spent time with his father in Yaroun.

In an interview with New York posts for days after a sting, Matar would not say if Fatwa followed, calling Rushdie as “someone who attacked Islam.”

In a separate indictment, the federal authorities state that Matar has forced the approval of the 2006 terrorist organization. A later trial of federal accusations of terrorism will be scheduled at the US District Court in Buffalo.