Mayville, N.Y. (WBEN/AP) - Proceedings in the case against Hadi Matar, the man accused of trying to kill world-renowned author Salman Rushdie, began on Monday at the Chautauqua County Court House, as lawyers on both sides presented their opening statements before beginning witness testimony.
Prosecution opened on Monday by saying that Rushdie, who was speaking at a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution on Aug. 12, 2022, was so stunned when a masked man started to stab him on a stage, the author didn't even try to fight back.
Jason Schmidt, Chautauqua County District Attorney, said Monday that it was less than two minutes into the opening statement of the lecture by the moderator when the man, accused to be Matar, took to a small staircase and onto the stage, where he rushed Rushdie with a knife, as he sat alongside Ralph Henry Reese - co-founder of City of Asylum Pittsburgh - in a living room conversation.
In the opening statement, Schmidt accused Matar of taking roughly 10 running paces to reach Rushdie before forcefully plunging the knife into the author "over-and-over-and-over again". The man stabbed and swung the knife into Rushdie's his head, his face, his abdomen, his thigh, and hand in the attack.
Prosecution stated the man attacked Rushdie with no evidence of prior provocation of the incident.
“It all happened so fast that even the person under attack, Mr. Rushdie, and the person sitting next to him, Mr. Reese, didn’t register what was happening,” Schmidt said.
The incident also saw Matar, allegedly, slash Reese above his eye as he and others on site attempted to subdue the attacker.
The man was then immediately taken into custody by one New York State Police Trooper, who confiscated a backpack he had dropped prior to storming the stage. Inside the backpack, officials allegedly found two other knives and other evidence that prosecution intends to present as evidence as to a motive for the attack.
Matar is facing a count of Attempted Murder in the Second Degree for his attack on Rushdie, while also facing a count of Assault in the Second Degree for slashing Reese.
Rushdie was able to survive the attack, though the prosecution stated that he had lost so much blood prior to arriving at the Level I trauma center hospital that he went into shock upon arrival.
The now 77-year-old is expected to testify during the trial, bringing the two face-to-face for the first time since the attack that left Rushdie seriously wounded and blind in one eye.
Matar, wearing a blue dress shirt, looked on from the defense table, occasionally taking notes. As he was led into the courtroom on Monday, though, the 27-year-old from Fairview, New Jersey could be heard calmly stating "Free Palestine" to the media on-hand.
“This is not a case of mistaken identity," Schmidt said. "Mr. Matar is the person who attacked Mr. Rushdie without provocation.”
Matar's defense faced a challenging start after it was announced that his lawyer, Nathaniel Barone, was hospitalized with an undisclosed illness and would not attend the start of the trial. Judge David Foley refused a defense request to postpone opening statements, instead instructing an associate of Barone to deliver the defense's opening statement in his place.
Assistant public defender Lynn Schaffer told jurors that prosecutors would be unable to prove Matar's guilt, even using video recordings and photos. She said the case is not as straightforward as the prosecution portrayed.
“What I want you to remember as you listen to the evidence, listen to the witnesses, the indictment is an outline of what is required of people in this trial. It’s a very specific list of factors the judge will define for you. It’s not a ‘who done it?’" said Schaffer.
“The elements of the crime are more than `something really bad happened’ — they’re more defined. Something bad did happen, something very bad did happen, but the district attorney has to prove much more than that.”
Schaffer also asked the members of the jury to not let what has been reported on or alleged before affect anything they hear or see in this case.
“No matter what you knew coming in here, none of that information ever told you why and none of that information that you get from the district attorney is going to tell you why,” she said.
Testimony got underway following the opening statements from lawyers, with two employees of the Chautauqua Institution (CQI) being the first to testify.
One employee was the chief program officer and senior vice president at CQI, who said was be responsible for the program itself (bringing in the speaker, transporting the speaker, housing the speaker, etc.) and the production team that makes all these things happen (set up of the stage is ready, microphones are working, etc.).
The other employee, who was working at the time as CQI's director of strategic communication, testified as the individual who first initiated contact with the man attacking Rushdie after noticing the attack first taking place backstage on a monitor. He went on to later point out Matar as the individual he had lowered his shoulder into after being asked who the individual was when being escorted out by law enforcement, without his mask on.
The trial is expected to last up to two weeks, but the defense acknowledged that timeline could vary.
Jurors will be shown video and photos from the day of the attack, which ended when onlookers rushed Matar and held him until police arrived.
Matar told investigators he traveled by bus to Chautauqua, about 75 miles to the South of Buffalo. He is believed to have slept in the grounds of the arts and academic retreat the night before the attack.
In a separate indictment, federal authorities allege Matar was motivated by a terrorist organization’s endorsement of a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death. A later trial on the federal charges — terrorism transcending national boundaries, providing material support to terrorists and attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization — will be scheduled in U.S. District Court in Buffalo.
In the federal indictment, authorities allege Matar believed the edict was backed by the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and endorsed in a 2006 speech by the group’s then-leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
The Indian-born British-American author detailed the attack and his long, painful recovery in a memoir, “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” released last year.
Rushdie had worried for his safety since his 1989 novel “The Satanic Verses” was denounced as blasphemous by many Muslims and led to Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa calling for his death. Rushdie spent years in hiding, but had traveled freely over the past quarter century after Iran announced it would not enforce the decree.
The trial is taking place as the 36th anniversary of the fatwa — Feb. 14, 1989 — approaches.
Rushdie has been one of the world's most celebrated authors since the 1981 publication of “Midnight's Children,” winner of the Booker Prize. His other works include the novels “Shame” and “Victory City,” which he had completed shortly before the 2022 stabbing, and the 2012 memoir “Joseph Anton,” in which he wrote about his time in hiding.