Jurors in trial of Salman Rushdie's attacker likely won't hear about his motive

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Jurors picked for the trial of a man who severely injured author Salman Rushdie in a knife attack likely won’t hear about the fatwa that authorities have said motivated him to act, a prosecutor said Friday.

“We're not going there,” District Attorney Jason Schmidt said during a conference in preparation for the Oct. 15 start of Hadi Matar's trial in Chautauqua County Court. Schmidt said raising a motive was unnecessary, given that the attack was witnessed and recorded by a live audience who had gathered to hear Rushdie speak.

Potential jurors will nevertheless face questions meant to root out implicit bias because Matar, of Fairview, New Jersey, is the son of Lebanese immigrants and practices Islam, Judge David Foley said. He said it would be foolish to assume potential jurors had not heard about the fatwa through media coverage of the case.

Matar, 26, is charged with attempted murder for stabbing Rushdie, 77, more than a dozen times, blinding him in one eye, as he took the stage at a literary conference at the Chautauqua Institution in August 2022.

A separate federal indictment charges him with terrorism, alleging Matar was attempting to carry out a fatwa, a call for Rushdie's death, first issued in 1989.

Defense attorney Nathaniel Barone sought assurances that jurors in the state trial would be properly vetted, fearing the current global unrest would influence their feelings toward Matar, who he said faced racism growing up.

“We're concerned there may be prejudicial feelings in the community,” said Barone, who also has sought a change of venue out of Chautauqua County. The request is pending before an appellate court.

Rushdie spent years in hiding after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued the fatwa over his novel “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims consider blasphemous. Rushdie slowly began to reemerge into public life in the late 1990s, and he has traveled freely over the past two decades.

The author, who detailed the attack and his recovery in a memoir, is expected to testify early in Matar's trial.