The suspect in the attack on Salman Rushdie pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault in a New York state court on Thursday, in a first appearance after his indictment by a grand jury, in a case with international resonance.
• Read also: Salman Rushdie attack suspect ‘surprised’ perpetrator survived
Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old American of Lebanese origin, is accused of having stabbed Salman Rushdie, the British author of “Satanic Verses”, on August 12, an attack which shocked in the West, but which was hailed by extremists in Muslim countries like Iran or Pakistan.
The writer, pursued for 33 years by a fatwa from the Iranian Supreme Leader condemning him to death, had come to speak in the small town of Chautauqua, the site of an annual literary festival for decades, very close to Lake Erie which separates the United States of Canada.
Arrested immediately after the facts, Hadi Matar had already pleaded not guilty during a procedural hearing on Saturday, but the appearance this Thursday, before the Mayville court in the presence of the press, suggests a trial in several months.
Mr. Matar, head down, masked, handcuffed and dressed in a prisoner’s outfit with black and white stripes, spoke Thursday through the voice of his lawyer Nathaniel Barone.
He did not open his mouth except to twice answer “yes” to procedural questions.
At least 25 years in prison
He faces up to 25 years in prison for attempted murder and up to seven more years for assault. Judge David Foley kept him in custody, without the possibility of bail, and the prosecution repeated that the attack was premeditated and “targeted” at Mr Rushdie.
Barone stressed to the press that his client was entitled to a “fair trial” and respect for the “presumption of innocence” in the “rule of law” and “democracy” that are the United States. More surprisingly, the lawyer regretted that this extraordinary case was the subject of such media exposure and a “public trial”.
In fact, Hadi Matar gave a video interview from prison to the New York Post tabloid on Wednesday, which greatly shocked the Mayville court. Mr. Matar said he was “surprised” that Salman Rushdie survived the attack.
The 75-year-old British author, stabbed a dozen times in the neck and abdomen and evacuated by helicopter to a hospital, had to briefly be placed on a ventilator before his condition improved.
Hadi Matar did not say whether he was inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa calling for the writer’s death after his book ‘The Satanic Verses’ was deemed blasphemous by Iran’s Supreme Leader .
He just explained to the New York Post to have “esteem for the ayatollah”, someone “remarkable”.
As for Salman Rushdie, Mr. Matar claimed that he was not “a good man” and that he had “attacked Islam”.
This young American from New Jersey had returned “changed” and more religious after a trip in 2018 to Lebanon, his parents’ country of origin, his mother told the Daily Mail on Monday.
Police protection
Salman Rushdie, born in 1947 in India into a family of non-practicing Muslim intellectuals, provoked the anger of part of the Muslim world with the publication in 1988 of “Satanic Verses”, a novel judged by the most rigorous as blasphemous to the regard to the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad.
Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie, who had lived for years under police protection.
The fatwa was never lifted and many of its translators came under attack.
But Tehran on Monday denied any involvement in the attack, blaming Salman Rushdie himself.
The world-renowned writer had lived in New York for twenty years and had become a US citizen in 2016. Despite the threat, he had appeared more and more frequently in public, often without visible protection, while continuing to defend in his books satire and irreverence.
In an interview given to the German magazine Stern a few days before the attack, he said he was “optimistic” and confided: “Since I have been living in the United States, I no longer have any problems (… ) My life is back to normal.”
Hadi Matar is due to appear in court again on September 7 and 22, according to Judge Foley.
But Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt admitted to the press that his “small” jurisdiction was not prepared for the shock of such a case. Investigators from the federal police, the FBI, are also investigating and nothing excludes that the case will one day be tried at the federal level.