Salman Rushdie knife assault suspect goes on trial

Jury choice has begun on the US trial of the person charged with stabbing author Sir Salman Rushdie.

Hadi Matar is charged with tried homicide and assault over the August 2022 incident that left Mr Rushdie blind in a single eye.

Mr Matar, 27, has pleaded not responsible to the costs.

The trial at Chautauqua County Court docket in New York state, which was delayed twice, will reportedly see Mr Rushdie give proof and face the accused in courtroom.

It had initially been scheduled to start in January 2024 however Mr Matar’s defence workforce appealed for the trial to be delayed on the grounds that Mr Rushdie’s then upcoming guide – a memoir concerning the assault – could possibly be used as proof and the defendant’s workforce wished to evaluation its contents first.

Then in October, the trial was positioned on maintain after Mr Matar’s authorized workforce made a request to maneuver the trial to a different county.

As reported by the New York Publish, Mr Matar’s legal professionals argued the defendant risked an unfair trial on the Chautauqua County Court docket in Mayville, given the publicity across the high-profile case and the shortage of an Arab-American group within the small county.

The request was unsuccessful and the trial started in Chautauqua County Court docket – which is in a village with a inhabitants of about 1,500 individuals – as initially deliberate.

5 jurors had been chosen on Tuesday and jury choice will proceed on Wednesday at 09:30 native time (14:30 GMT).

In August 2022, the Indian-born British-American writer was placed on a ventilator and spent six weeks in hospital after being stabbed as much as 10 instances on stage at an occasion in New York state.

Mr Matar, who was 24 on the time, is accused of sprinting on stage and finishing up the assault.

The accidents resulted in injury to Mr Rushdie’s liver, misplaced imaginative and prescient in a single eye and a paralysed hand brought on by nerve injury to his arm.

The Satanic Verses writer beforehand informed BBC Newshour he was not sure if he needed to face his alleged attacker in courtroom.

“I am in two minds about it,” he mentioned. “There’s one little bit of me that truly needs to go and stand on the courtroom and take a look at him and there is one other little bit of me that simply cannot be bothered.”

Henry Reese, moderator of the occasion Mr Rushdie was attending on the Chautauqua Establishment in western New York state, was additionally injured within the assault.

Separate to the Chautauqua County Court docket expenses, Mr Matar was charged by a federal courtroom with offering materials help to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, in line with an indictment unsealed final July.

Hezbollah is designated a terrorist organisation by Western states, Israel, Gulf Arab international locations and the Arab League.

Mr Rushdie, now 77, is an acclaimed author who beforehand spent a number of years in hiding after the 1988 publication of The Satanic Verses – a fictional story impressed by the lifetime of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad – triggered threats in opposition to his life.

The surrealist, post-modern novel sparked outrage amongst some Muslims, who thought of its content material to be blasphemous – insulting to a faith or god – and was banned in some international locations.

A yr after the guide’s launch, Iran’s Supreme Chief Ayatollah Khomeini known as for Mr Rushdie’s execution. He provided a $3m (£2.5m) reward in a fatwa – a authorized decree issued by an Islamic spiritual chief.