The trial of the man charged with stabbing Salman Rushdie on stage in 2022 may be delayed because of plans to publish the writer’s memoir about the incident.
On 2 January, Chautauqua county judge David Foley said in a pretrial conference that accused attacker Hadi Matar is entitled to see the memoir manuscript and any related materials as part of trial preparation, AP reported. The jury selection is due to begin on 8 January.
On 12 August 2022, Rushdie was about to give a talk at the Chautauqua Institution in New York state when a man rushed on stage and stabbed the writer in the neck, eye, stomach, thigh and chest. He underwent treatment in hospital for six weeks, and has been left blinded in one eye with lost feeling in some fingertips.
His memoir about the event, titled Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, is scheduled to be published on 16 April by Penguin. Foley gave Matar and his lawyer, Nathaniel Barone, until Wednesday 3 January to decide whether to delay the trial until they have a copy of the manuscript in advance or once it has been released in spring.
Barone said after court that he favoured a delay but would consult Matar. “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.”
Rushdie’s representatives declined the prosecutor’s request for a copy of the memoir citing intellectual property rights, said district attorney Jason Schmidt. Schmidt also questioned the relevance of the memoir’s content in the trial, given that the attack was witnessed by a large audience and Rushdie himself could testify. “There were recordings of it,” he added.
Last October, Schmidt said that he plans for Rushdie to testify. In July, Rushdie said that he was in “two minds” about attending the trial. “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.”
Matar pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault. He has been held without bail since his arrest immediately after the attack.
The attack happened 33 years after Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death in the aftermath of the publication of The Satanic Verses, which was deemed blasphemous.
Rushdie said that his forthcoming memoir was a “necessary” book for him to write. “A way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art.”
