BUFFALO, N.Y. — The man who was convicted of trying to kill Salman Rushdie went on trial again Wednesday, this time in a federal case that casts the stabbing on a lecture stage as an act of terrorism.
Prosecutors said Hadi Matar attacked the renowned author and free-speech advocate in 2022 to try to carry out a decades-old fatwa, or religious ruling, calling for Rushdie’s death over what some Muslims saw as blasphemy in his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses.”
“Fulfill the fatwa — that’s what Hadi Matar intended to do,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Lynch said in an opening statement at a federal courthouse in Buffalo, New York, about 70 miles (110 km) from the arts and intellectual retreat where Rushdie was assaulted. The Booker Prize-winning author is expected to testify later this week about the stabbing that nearly killed him and left him blind in one eye.
Defense attorney Nathaniel Barone urged jurors to keep their minds open about the case, which hinges not only on actions but on motivation.
“You’re going to have to ask yourselves: What was Hadi Matar’s intent?” Barone said in his opening.
Matar, 28, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges that include engaging in an act of transnational terrorism. He took notes on a yellow pad and rarely looked at jurors during the opening statements, at times shifting around in his swivel chair. Currently serving a 25-year New York State prison sentence on an attempted murder and assault conviction, he was attired for court in dress pants and a shirt that seemed too large.
Rushdie, now 79, was repeatedly slashed in front of a horrified audience at the Chautauqua Institution, where he was about to discuss writer safety. He recounted the assault and his lengthy recovery during Matar’s earlier trial, in a memoir and in multiple interviews.
“The thing that happens when you get really a close-up look at death — that’s as close as you can get without actually doing the dance of death and heading off to nowhere — it stays with you,” he told The Associated Press in 2024. “There’s a shadow.”
The attempted murder case against Matar focused on the details of the knife attack while the federal one delves more into questions of motive. If convicted, he faces a potential life sentence.
Prosecutors have argued that he was acting out of loyalty to Iran’s theocratic government and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group after the Islamic Republic’s late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for Rushdie’s death because of his 1988 novel, “The Satanic Verses.”
Matar’s electronics included information on the fatwa that sought Rushdie’s death, and Matar kept a journal and sticky notes logging his research on Rushdie and possible ways and places to kill him, prosecutors said in a 2025 court filing. In Matar’s New Jersey bedroom, federal agents found photos of Khomeini and his now-deceased successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the filing said.
“When he attempted to carry out the fatwa, he believed he was doing so on behalf of” Hezbollah, which the U.S. government designates as a terrorist organization, Lynch and fellow Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Kruly wrote in the filing.
In the years leading up to the trial, Matar’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to exclude some evidence from his social media accounts and other digital activity, arguing that the government’s electronic searches cast too big a net.
Matar declined to testify at his state court trial, and it’s unclear whether he will take the stand in federal court. At his state court sentencing, Matar said he believed in free speech but asserted that Rushdie was “a hypocrite” who “wants to bully other people.”
Matar also spoke out in support of Palestinians while heading into and out of the state courtroom.
Born in the U.S. to parents who immigrated from Lebanon, Matar is a citizen of both countries. His mother has said he turned moody and withdrawn after a 2018 trip to Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based.
Rushdie was born in India, raised in Britain — where he was knighted by the late Queen Elizabeth II — and now is a U.S. citizen. He won the Booker Prize in 1981 for “Midnight’s Children,” a magical realist novel about a personal and national journey that begins at the instant when India became independent.
But Rushdie became most famous, and notorious, for “The Satanic Verses,” particularly a passage featuring a dream sequence about the Prophet Muhammad. Some Muslims saw it as blasphemous, and often-violent protests erupted against Rushdie, who was born into a Muslim family.
Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa drove Rushdie into hiding for years. Although Iran hasn’t focused in recent years on the decree, it was never rescinded. Iran’s government denied involvement in the 2022 stabbing, but its Foreign Ministry’s then-spokesperson suggested Rushdie invited trouble by insulting Islam.
After “Knife,” Rushdie’s memoir about the stabbing, he returned to fiction with last year’s “The Eleventh Hour,” a book of short stories and novellas. He was recognized with a Dayton Literary Peace Prize lifetime achievement award in November.
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Peltz reported from New York.
