A man charged with stabbing novelist Salman Rushdie in western New York last week was found guilty of attempted second-degree murder and He pleaded not guilty to the assault charge. and he was ordered to be detained without bail.
Hadi Matar, 24, was charged with injuring 75-year-old Rushdie. Last Friday, just before the author gave a talk on stage at an educational facility near Lake. Ellie.
Rushdie was hospitalized with serious injuries that writers and politicians around the world condemned as an attack on free expression.
Matar was briefed in Chautauqua County District Court on the indictment returned earlier in the day from a grand jury charged with one count of attempted second-degree murder and one count of second-degree assault. was arraigned during trial.
The attack came 33 years after Iran's then-supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or religious edict, in which Satanic poetry was published. A few months later, he called on Muslims to assassinate Rushdie. Some Muslims viewed passages about the Prophet Muhammad as blasphemy.
Born in India to a Muslim Kashmiri family, Rushdie lived with a bounty on his head and under the protection of British police he has been hiding for nine years.
In 1998, Iran's reformist government, led by President Mohammed Khatami, distanced itself from Fatwa, saying the threat to Rushdie was over. But then the multi-million dollar bounty was increased and the fatwa was never lifted.
Khomeini's successor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was suspended from Twitter in 2019 after he said a fatwa against Rushdie was "irrevocable."
In an interview published in the New York Post on Wednesday, Matar said he admired Khomeini but did not say whether he was inspired by the fatwa. He said he had "read a few pages" of Satanic Verse and watched the author's YouTube video of him.
"I don't really like him," Matar said of Rushdie, as reported in the Post. It attacked."
Iran's foreign ministry said Tehran should not be accused of being involved in the attack. Police said Matar is believed to have acted alone.
Matar is a Shiite Muslim born in California to a family of Lebanese origin.
According to prosecutors, he went to the Shatauqua Institute, about 12 miles from Lake Erie, where he purchased a pass for Rushdie's lectures.
According to eyewitnesses, there was no apparent security check on him at the venue, and Matar did not speak as he attacked the author. He was arrested at the scene by a New York State Police officer after being knocked to the ground by an audience member. his agent said.
