The trial of Salman Rushdie’s striker to start with a cunning choice of jury | News of Islamophobia
Hadi Matar, 26, was accused of repeatedly stabbed the older writer during the 2022 lecture.
The trial of a man who attacked the Indian-British author Salman Rushdie two years ago on charges of attempted murder should begin in the United States.
Choosing a jury should start on Tuesday for the trial of Hadi Matar, which Repeatedly stabbed A 77-year-old novelist in the face, neck and abdomen during a public lecture in New York in August 2022. Prosecutors and defense suggested that the process could be cunning, but the global environment would help promote the “bias” from Islam.
The attack on Rushdie, which had previously been the target of death threats due to its Islam writings, resulted in the loss of the right eye and damage to the liver, among other injuries.
Matar, 26, declared that he was not guilty of allegations of attempted second -degree murder and a second -degree attack on the attack on Chautauqua’s institution in Western New York.
The trial was delayed twice, recently after his lawyer tried unsuccessfully to move him to another place, saying that Matar could not get a fair trial at Chautauqua. He rejected an agreement on a recognition of guilt for a 20-year sentence.
If he is convicted of attempted murder, Matar faces a penalty of up to 25 years in prison. However, the double citizen of the United States and Lebanon also faces federal accusations by accusing him of terrorism and of providing material support for the Lebanese group supporting Iran Hezbollah, which now marks the “terrorist organization.”
The prosecutors in the federal case claim that the alleged attack was not accidental, but motivated Fatwa or the death threat, which was issued by the Iranian leadership of Iranian leadership against Rushdie because of the author’s 1988 Satanic verses, which many Muslims consider blasphemy.
After the attack, the suspect told the media that he had traveled from his home in New Jersey after seeing that the Rushdie event had been advertised because he did not like the novelists saying that Rushdie had attacked Islam.
Rushdie will be among the first witnesses to witness at the trial. From the attack, the author published a memoir and said in interviews He believed he would die on stage.
Raised in the Muslim Kashmiri family, a writer with multiple award -winners was forced into a decade of hiding in 1989, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the then Iranian supreme leader, invited him to be killed.
This caused a storm of protest in the Western world in support of free speech. The Iranian government said in 1998 that she would no longer support Fatwa, and Rushdie ended up as a hermit for his year.
The prosecutors at the trial said that the jurors would probably not hear about Fatwa, saying that the presentation of the motive was unnecessary because the attack was witnesses and recorded in the video many in the audience.
Instead, they spoke of a challenge that they would face in choosing a fair and impartial jury because of the level of publicity on the incident.
Matar’s lawyer said he was afraid that current global unrest could have a negative impact, citing concerns about “innate and implicit bias” towards Arab American and Muslim or Arab community in Chautauqua.
With tensions about religiously motivated violence, the judge in this case ordered both sides to avoid statements to the media.
