The trial of Hadi Matar, the man charged with stabbing Salman Rushdie on stage at an event in August 2022, may be delayed due to Rushdie’s plans to publish a memoir that will incorporate the incident.
According to a statement made by Chautauqua county judge David Foley in a pretrial conference on January 2nd, Matar is entitled to see the manuscript of the memoir and any related materials as part of preparation for the trial.
The incident occurred on August 12th, 2022, as Rushdie was about to give a talk at the Chautauqua Institution in New York when Matar rushed on stage and stabbed him in the neck, eye, stomach, thigh, and chest. He underwent treatment and recovery in the hospital for six weeks, and is permanently blinded in his right eye with some lost feeling in several fingertips.
Rushdie’s memoir about the event will be titled Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, and is scheduled to be published on April 16th by Penguin.
Judge Foley gave Matar and his lawyer, Nathaniel Barone, until Wednesday, January 3rd, to decide whether to delay the trial until they have a copy of the manuscript in advance or once it has been fully released in Spring. Barrone claimed after the court hearing that he prefered a delay but would still consult Matar- who has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
“It’s not just the book,” Barone said. “Every little note Rushdie wrote down, I get, I’m entitled to. Every discussion, every recording, anything he did in regard to this book.”
However, according to district attorney Jason Schmidt, Rushdie’s representatives declined the defense’s request for a copy of the memoir, citing intellectual property rights. Schmidt himself also questioned the relevance of the memoir’s content in the development of the trial, as the attack was witnessed by a considerable audience and Rushdie even alleges that there were recordings of it.
Rushdie has expressed concerns about physically appearing at the trial, stating he was in “two minds” about it this past July. “There’s one bit of me that actually wants to go and stand on the court and look at him and there’s another bit of me that just can’t be bothered,” he commented.
Matar has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault. He has been held without bail since his arrest occurred immediately after the public attack.
This attack came 33 years after Iran’s late former leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, which Khomeini ruled as blasphemous.
According to Rushdie, this expected memoir was a “necessary” book for him to write and “a way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art.”
The jury selection for the trial is set to start on January 8th.
