Terrorism trial opens in stabbing of author Salman Rushdie

The man convicted of trying to kill Salman Rushdie spent years researching the writer’s whereabouts before stabbing him on a lecture stage, federal prosecutors said Wednesday at the opening of his federal terrorism trial.

It is a second trial for Hadi Matar, who was found guilty in a New York state attempted murder case last year. The federal terror charges focus more on Matar’s alleged motive for the attack on the renowned author and free-speech advocate in 2022.

Prosecutors started working on Wednesday to persuade jurors that Matar was trying to carry out a 1989 fatwa, or religious ruling, that called for Rushdie’s death because of what some Muslims saw as blasphemy in his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.

“Fulfil the fatwa – that’s what Hadi Matar intended to do,” Assistant US Attorney Timothy Lynch said in an opening statement at a federal courthouse in Buffalo, New York, about 110km (70 miles) 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.

Defence lawyer Nathaniel Barone urged jurors to keep their minds open.