Salman Rushdie described the frenzied moments in 2022 in graphic details on Tuesday when a masked man piled him on a stage in the Western New York and repeatedly opened him with a knife, which caused him to leave life -threatening injuries.
The 77-year-old author spoke on the second day of the certificate in the trial against the 27-year-old Hadi Matar, who was not guilty of having a murder and attack in the attack. It was the first time since the attack that Rush was in the same room, the man was accused of killing him.
“I only saw him at the last minute,” said Rushdie. “I was aware that someone was wearing black clothes or dark clothes and a black face mask. I was very impressed with his eyes that were dark and were very wild.”
Rushdie said at first he thought that his knife-swinging attacker would hit him with a fist.
“But I saw a large amount of blood pouring on my clothes,” he said. “He repeatedly beat me. Hit and meanders.”
Rushdie said that he was hit in his chest and upper body more often and stabbed his chest when he tried to get away.
“I was very seriously injured. I couldn’t get up anymore. I fell,” he said.
“I died”
While he was lying on the stage, he remembered “a feeling of great pain and shock and aware that there was an enormous amount of blood in which I lay.”
“It came to me that I was dying. That was my predominant thought,” he said.
His wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, cried from her seat in the second row of the courtroom.
Rushdie was blinded in an eye in an eye and spent months to recover, a process that he described in a memoir published last year. A spokesman who was supposed to appear with rushdie was also wounded.
The jurors heard opening statements on Monday, followed by statements by employees of the Chautauqua Institution, the non-profit art and education center, in which the attack took place about 120 kilometers south of Buffalo.
Matar was in custody since he was subjected by the spectators after the attack.
The attempt is expected to take up to two weeks.
According to district prosecutor Jason Schmidt, it is unlikely that the jury will be published by a Fatwa by the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who calls for the death of Rushdie. Rushdie, the author of Children from midnight And Victory CityHidden years after Khomeini announced the Fatwa after the publication of the novel in 1989 The satanic versesWhat was inspired by the life of the Prophet Muhammad and that some Muslims consider to be blasphemy.
“No case of false identity”
Schmidt said that the discussion of Matar’s motif will be unnecessary in the state process, since the attack was viewed by a living audience that had expected to give Rushdie a lecture on the security of the writers.
“This is not a case of false identity,” said Schmidt during the opening statements on Monday. “Mr. Matar is the person who has attacked Mr. Rushdie without provocation.”
A public defender who represents Matar told the jury that the case was not as easy as the public prosecutor is.
“The elements of the crime have more than” something really bad ” – they are more defined,” said Lynn Schaffer. “Something bad has happened, something very bad has happened, but the district prosecutor has to prove much more than that.”
In a separate indictment, the federal authorities claim that Matar was driven by the FATWA confirmation of the FATWA by the terrorist organization from 2006. A later trial of the federal government’s suspicion of terrorism is planned before the US district court in Buffalo.
