Salman Rushdie testified in the federal terrorism trial of the man who was earlier convicted of attempting to murder him, the Associated Press reports.
Rushdie took the stand to recount the moment in August of 2022 when he was stabbed repeatedly by Hadi Matar as he was about to give a lecture in Chautauqua, New York. The attack nearly killed Rushdie, leaving him blind in one eye and unable to use one of his hands. After the stabbing, Matar told the New York Post that he admired Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late Iranian leader who issued a fatwa against Rushdie over his novel The Satanic Verses.
Rushdie wrote about the attack in his memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, which was adapted into a documentary by filmmaker Alex Gibney.
Last February, Matar was convicted on state charges of attempted murder and assault; he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Matar is now facing three federal terrorism charges related to the attack; if convicted, he could face life in prison. Rushdie testified against Matar in a federal court in Buffalo, New York, last Thursday, saying he initially thought he had been punched. “I was on the stage, lying down, with an enormous pool of blood all around me,” he said. “It was an enormous and expansive lake of blood.”
The AP reports that Nathaniel Barone, a lawyer representing Matar, asked Rushdie multiple times whether he thought there would be backlash to The Satanic Verses before publishing it.
“Probably, but I don’t believe the book to be on trial here,” Rushdie said. “I believe someone else is on trial.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
