2022 stabbing attack: Salman Rushdie testifies against accused; ‘…I saw blood on my clothes’

Rushdie, who was blinded in one eye due to the attack, detailed his recovery process in a memoir released last year. A speaker who was set to appear with him was also wounded.

Jurors in the western New York trial are expected to see video and photos from the day of the attack, but they will not hear about the fatwa issued in 1989 by Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, according to District Attorney Jason Schmidt.

Speaking in a clear voice as he took to stand, Rushdie described how he was seated, facing co-speaker Henry Reece and the audience, when “this assault began.”

“I was aware of this person rushing at me from my right-hand side. I was aware of someone in dark clothes … I was struck by his eyes which seemed dark and ferocious to me.”

Rushdie recalled the moment he was first struck. “He hit me very hard around my jawline and neck. Initially I thought he’d punched me with his fist, but very soon afterwards I saw blood on my clothes,” Rushdie said.

As the attack escalated, Rushdie realised he was being stabbed.

“Everything happened very quickly. I was stabbed repeatedly, and most painfully in my eye. I struggled to get away. I held up my hand in self-defense and was stabbed through that.”

Asked how many times he was stabbed, Rushdie said: “I wasn’t keeping score.” Rushdie had attempted to flee but collapsed under the force of the assault.

Matar stabbed Rushdie more than a dozen times in the neck, stomach, chest, hand and right eye, leaving him partially blind and with permanent damage to one hand. (File Photo)

“He was trying to strike me as many times as possible. I was very badly injured and I couldn’t stand up any more,” he testified, estimating that he had been struck 50 times.

“I was screaming because of the pain,” he continued, describing the wound to his right eye that took his sight in that eye. Rushdie then showed jurors the empty socket beneath the eye patch he now wears.

While lying on the stage, he became aware of the severity of his injuries. “I became aware of a great quantity of blood I was lying in. My sense of time was quite cloudy, I was in pain from my eye and hand, and it occurred to me quite clearly I was dying.”

Rushdie recounted being placed on a gurney and wheeled to a helicopter. “I was dimly aware of what was going on until the helicopter landed, then I don’t remember anything until much later.”

He was hospitalized for over two weeks and spent time on a ventilator, communicating only by wiggling his feet.

“This is not a case of mistaken identity,” Schmidt told the court in his opening statements Monday. “Matar is the person who attacked Rushdie without provocation.”

Hadi Matar, charged with severely injuring author Salman Rushdie in a 2022 knife attack, is led out of Chautauqua County court after the first day of jury selection in Mayville, N.Y. (AP Photo)

Matar’s defense attorney, Lynn Schaffer, argued that the case is more complex than the prosecutors suggest.

“The elements of the crime are more than ‘something really bad happened’—they’re more defined,” she said. “Something bad did happen, something very bad did happen, but the district attorney has to prove much more than that.”

Matar has been in custody since the attack, which took place in front of a live audience. The trial is expected to last up to two weeks.

In addition to the state charges, Matar faces a separate federal indictment alleging that he was motivated by a terrorist organisation’s 2006 endorsement of the fatwa against Rushdie. A later trial on federal terrorism charges will be scheduled in US District Court in Buffalo.

(With inputs from Associated Press)