Salman Rushdie described the frenzied moments in 2022 on Tuesday when a masked man piled him on a stage in the Western New York and repeatedly opened him with a knife, he would die with terrible injuries and fear.
Rushdie appeared on the second day of the certificate in the procedure against Hadi Matar, 27, who did not guilty in the attack, which was also wounded by another man. It was the first time since the attack on August 12, 2022 that the 77-year-old author was in the same room, with the man being accused of killing him.
Rushdie remembered “feeling a feeling of great pain and shock and being aware of the fact south of Buffalo, ny, where he should present a lecture that day.
“It came to me that I was dying. That was my predominant thought,” he said, adding that the people who subjected his attacker probably saved his life.
When he told the attack, his wife Rachel Eliza Griffiths cried from her seat in the second row of the courtroom.
“I only saw him at the last minute,” said Rushdie about the man who stormed the stage in the institution and repeatedly stabbed him with a 10-inch blade with 25 centimeters.
“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 he initially 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. He was blinded in an eye in an eye.
“I was very seriously injured. I couldn’t get up anymore. I fell,” he said.
The current one27:02Salman Rushdie in the 27 seconds that almost killed him
Weeks of recovery
Rushdie spent 17 days in a hospital in Pennsylvania and more than three weeks in a rehabilitation center in New York City, where he learned basic skills such as pressing toothpaste from a tube. He describes his months of recovery in a memoir published last year.
Although he said he was “essentially recovered”, he still doesn’t feel at “100 percent”.
“I’m not as energetic as before. I’m not as physically strong as before,” he said.
Matar, who was about six meters from Rushdie in the courtroom, often looked down during his certificate.
Cross -experiences begins
Lynn Schaffer, a public defender who represents Matar, began her cross -experiences by asking the author who was awarded by Booker Prize about his career. The survey was short, reserved and friendly for a moment. She asked Rushdie if he would surprise that Bridget Jones’ diaryIn which he makes a camoo was her favorite film.
“I’m surprised,” said Rushdie and joked that it was his “most important work”.
The only indication of a possible defense strategy was a question of whether trauma can influence the memories.
Rushdie admitted that he had a wrong memory that he thought he got up when he saw how the attacker approached, but that was not true.
Schaffer then asked him to remember how often he was beaten.
“I didn’t count at the time. I was otherwise occupied,” replied Rushdie. “But after that I could see her on my body. I didn’t have to say anyone.”
Nobody asked Rushdie to identify his attacker in court, and he declined to be asked when he left the courthouse after about an hour of certificate.
Later on Tuesday, Chautauqua County Sheriff, representative Jason Beichner Matar identified as an attacker that he held behind the scenes after the attack. He said that Matar was calm and cooperative while his clothes were dismantled and there seemed to be blood on his hands.
The security was particularly narrower before the appearance of rush, and several law enforcement vehicles outside the court building were parked.
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 in 1989 after the publication of his novel 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 procedure, since the attack was seen by a living audience, the expected that Rushdie will give 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.”
Matar is a double Lebanese American citizen. According to the mayor of the village in the United States, he was born in parents, who emigrated from Yaroun in the South Libanon dominated by the Hisbollah near the Israeli border. Matar’s mother said she believes that her son was radicalized in 2018 when he spent time with his father in Yaroun.
In a jailhouse interview with the New York Post days after the Stich, Matar would not say whether he followed a fatwa and described Rushdie as “someone who attacked Islam”.
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.
