Salman Rushdie assault suspect pleads not responsible to tried homicide, assault

A person accused of stabbing novelist Salman Rushdie final week in western New York pleaded not responsible to second-degree tried homicide and assault costs on Thursday throughout an arraignment listening to and was ordered held with out bail.

Hadi Matar, 24, is accused of wounding Rushdie, 75, on Friday simply earlier than the “The Satanic Verses” creator was to ship a lecture on stage at an academic retreat close to Lake Erie. Rushdie was hospitalized with severe accidents in what writers and politicians all over the world decried as an assault on the liberty of expression.

Matar was arraigned throughout a quick listening to in Chautauqua County district courtroom on an indictment returned earlier within the day by a grand jury that charged him with one rely of second-degree tried homicide and one rely of second-degree assault.

The assault got here 33 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran’s supreme chief, issued a fatwa, or spiritual edict, calling on Muslims to assassinate Rushdie just a few months after “The Satanic Verses” was revealed. Some Muslims noticed passages concerning the Prophet Muhammad as blasphemous.

Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim Kashmiri household, has lived with a bounty on his head, and spent 9 years in hiding beneath British police safety.

In 1998, Iran’s pro-reform authorities of President Mohammad Khatami distanced itself from the fatwa, saying the menace in opposition to Rushdie was over. But the multimillion-dollar bounty has since grown and the fatwa was by no means lifted: Khomeini’s successor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was suspended from Twitter in 2019 for saying the fatwa in opposition to Rushdie was “irrevocable.”

In an interview revealed by the New York Post on Wednesday, Matar stated he revered Khomeini however wouldn’t say if he was impressed by the fatwa. He stated he had “read a couple of pages” of “The Satanic Verses” and watched YouTube movies of the creator.

“I don’t like him very much,” Matar stated of Rushdie, as reported within the Post. “He’s someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems.”

Iran’s international ministry on Monday stated that Tehran shouldn’t be accused of being concerned within the assault. Matar is believed to have acted alone, police have stated.

Matar is a Shi’ite Muslim who was born in California to a household from Lebanon.

Prosecutors say he travelled to Chautauqua Institution, a retreat about 12 miles (19 km) from Lake Erie, the place he purchased a move to Rushdie’s lecture.

Witnesses stated there have been no apparent safety checks on the lecture venue and that Matar didn’t communicate as he attacked the creator. He was arrested on the scene by a New York State Police trooper after being wrestled to the bottom by viewers members.

Rushdie sustained extreme accidents within the assault, together with nerve harm in his arm, wounds to his liver, and the doubtless lack of a watch, his agent stated.