Mayville, NY – Salman Rushdy rushed to him on a stage in West New York in 2022, repeatedly slamming him with a knife and fearing he would die from being badly injured, when he went crazy on Tuesday Details of the graphics have been explained.
Rushdy stood up on the second day of testimony at 27-year-old Hadi Matar’s trial. It was the first time the 77-year-old author was in the same room as a man accused of trying to kill him, after a stab wound.
Rushdy felt “I am aware of the great sensation of pain and shock, and the fact that there was a huge amount of blood I was lying down after the attack.”
“I knew I was dying, and that was my main idea,” he said, adding that those who held back his assailants likely saved his life.
As he spoke of the attack, his wife, Rachel Eliza Griffith, cried out from her seat in the second row of the courtroom.
“I just saw him in the last moment,” Rushdee said of the man who repeatedly stabbed him with a 10-inch blade, running through the stage of the Chotouka Society.
“I knew someone who was wearing black clothes or someone who was wearing black clothes and a black face mask. I was very struck by his eyes. It was dark and very ferocious. I could see it.”
Rushdy said he first thought the knife-wielding attacker was attacking him with his fist.
“But I saw a lot of blood poured into my clothes,” he said. “He kept hitting me over and over. He slashed me.”
Rushdy said he was hit again in the chest and torso, struggling to escape and stabbing him in the chest.
“I was very badly injured. I couldn’t stand up anymore. I fell,” he said.
Rushdy was blinded in one eye in the attack.
He spent 17 days at Pennsylvania Hospital and over three weeks at a rehabilitation center in New York City. There, I had to relearse basic skills such as squeezing toothpaste from a tube. He detailed his recovery over several months in a memoir released last year.
“I don’t think I’m 100% at all. I think I’ve essentially recovered, but maybe 75-80%,” Rushdy testified. “I’m not as energetic as I used to be. I’m not as physically strong as I used to be.”
Sitting in court about 20 feet from Rushdee, Mathal often looked down during his testimony.
Lynn Schaffer, the official defender who represents Mathal, began his mutual jury by asking Booker Prize-winning authors about his career. The questions were short, modest and friendly for a moment. She asks Rushdee if he is surprised that Bridget Jones’ Diary, which makes a cameo, is her favorite film.
“I’m surprised,” Rushdee joked that it was his “most important job.”
The only hint of possible defence strategies was the question of whether trauma could affect memory.
Rushdy admitted that he had false memories and that he had risen when he saw the attacker approaching, but that was not true.
She then challenged him to remember how many times he was hit.
“I wasn’t counting at the time. Otherwise I would have been occupied. But after that I could see them in my body. There’s no need for anyone to say it. did.”
No one asked Rushdi to identify the attacker in court, but after about an hour of testimony he refused to be interviewed as he left the court.
Security was significantly more severe than the arrival of Rushdee, with several law enforcement being parked outside the courthouse.
On Monday, staff from the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit arts education center, which occurred about 75 miles south of Buffalo, testified about the attack.
The exam is expected to last up to two weeks.
District Attorney Jason Schmidt said the ju judges have not heard of Fatwa, the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhola Khomeini, who is seeking Rushdee’s death. Rushdie, author of “Midnight’s Children” and “Victory City,” spent years in hiding after Khomeini published Fatwa in 1989 following the publication of “The Satanic Verses.”
Schmidt said that discussion of Mathal’s motivation is not necessary in state trials, given that the attack was seen by live audiences who expected Rushdie to listen to lectures on keeping writers safe. It’s there.
“This is not a case of false identity,” Schmidt said in the opening of a statement Monday. “Mr. Mathal is the one who attacked Mr. Rushdi without provoking him.”
Schaffer, the defense attorney, told the ju judge that the case was not as easy as prosecutors would do.
“The element of crime is more than ‘something really bad’. They’re becoming more clear,” Shaffer said. “Something bad happened. Something really bad happened, but the district attorney has to prove something more.”
In another indictment, federal authorities allege that Matar was driven by Fatowa’s approval in 2006 to act. A later trial on federal terrorist accusations is scheduled for in the US District Court in Buffalo.
