A grand jury has indicted the man who allegedly stabbed Salman Rushdie as the acclaimed author prepared to give a talk in Western New York, county prosecutors said Thursday.
Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, NJ, is scheduled to appear on the charges at an afternoon court hearing in Chautauqua County. Matar was arrested on August 12 after allegedly storming the stage of the Chautauqua Institution, stabbing Rushdie several times in front of a horrified crowd.
The first charges were filed the next day, when Matar’s court-appointed attorney entered a “not guilty” plea on his behalf. Prosecutors did not immediately release the new charges.
The suspect was apparently surprised that Rushdie survived
Matar reportedly said in an interview published Wednesday that he was surprised to learn that the accomplished perpetrator had survived the attack.
Speaking to the New York Post from prison, Matar said he decided to see Rushdie at the Chautauqua institution after seeing a tweet last winter about the writer’s planned appearance.
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“I don’t like the person. I don’t think he’s a very good person,” Matar told the newspaper. “He’s someone who attacked Islam. He attacked their beliefs, belief systems.”
Matar, 24, said he considered the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini “a great person,” but did not say whether he was following a fatwa, or edict, issued by Khomeini in Iran in 1989 that called for Rushdie’s death after the author published The Satanic Verses.
Iran has denied involvement in the attack. Matar said he had no contact with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. He told the Post that he had only read “a couple of pages” of The Satanic Verses.
Rushdie, 75, suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and eye, according to his agent, in Friday’s attack. His agent, Andrew Wylie, said his condition has improved and he is on the road to recovery.
Matar, who is charged with attempted murder and assault, told the Post he took a bus to Buffalo the day before the attack and then took a Lyft to make the 65-mile trip from there to in Chautauqua. He allegedly bought a pass to the Chautauqua Institution grounds and then slept on the grass the night before Rushdie’s scheduled talk.
Matar was born in the US but has dual citizenship in Lebanon, where his parents were born. His mother has told reporters in interviews that Matar returned changed from a visit to see his father in Lebanon in 2018. After that, he became moody and withdrew from his family, she said .
LISTEN | The fatwa on Salman Rushdie, 3 decades later:
Front Burner29:03 The fatwa on Salman Rushdie, 3 decades later
Writer Salman Rushdie is still recovering in hospital from a brutal attack at a literary event last Friday. A young man came on stage and stabbed Rushdie nearly a dozen times, leaving him with injuries so severe he could lose an eye. Although Rushdie himself has never been attacked like this before, this is not the first attempt on his life. He has been the target of death threats since Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death in 1989. The fatwa was over Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, parts of which some Muslims consider blasphemous. The uproar over the book sparked massive protests in many countries, pushed Rushdie into hiding for nearly a decade, and led to the deaths of several people around the world. In England, where Rushdie was based, many people believe that he also transformed UK society, particularly relations between British Muslims and non-Muslims. Today we look back at The Satanic Verses affair and its long-term impacts with BBC journalist and filmmaker Mobeen Azhar. He has made a documentary about it, The Satanic Verses: 30 Years On, and a podcast, Fatwa. We will also hear from the famous British novelist and playwright Hanif Kureishi, who is a long-time friend of Rushdie.