(BUFFALO, NY) – A man who seriously injured writer Salman Rushdie in a frenzied knife attack in Western New York was motivated by a Hezbollah leader’s endorsement of a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death, prosecutors said Wednesday. fair when announcing new terrorism charges.
The three-count indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in Buffalo offered for the first time a potential motive for the 2022 attack on the author of “The Satanic Verses.”
Hadi Matar, a U.S. citizen from New Jersey, was trying to execute a fatwa, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Kruly. According to the prosecutor, Matar believed that the call for Rushdie’s death, first issued in 1989, was supported by the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and endorsed in a 2006 speech by the group’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah.
“We allege that by attempting to assassinate Salman Rushdie in New York in 2022, Hadi Matar committed an act of terrorism on behalf of Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization aligned with the Iranian regime,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press release. “The Department of Justice will prosecute those who commit violence in the name of terrorist groups and undermine the basic freedoms enshrined in our Constitution.”
Matar, who faces separate state charges of attempted murder and assault, pleaded not guilty to new federal charges of terrorism transcending national borders, providing material support to terrorists and attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization.
“The investigation has been long, over the last two years, and I’m sure it has involved several different agencies, several different countries, and several different individuals,” Matar’s attorney, Nathaniel Barone, said after the arraignment. He said the federal case will be much more complex than the state charges, which focus primarily on the attack on Rushdie while he was on stage and about to give a talk at the Chautauqua Institution in August 2022.
See more information: Salman Rushdie is recovering, reflecting and writing about the attack on his life
“Federally, there are more conspiracies,” the lawyer said.
Matar, he said, “plans to pursue a vigorous defense and maintain his innocence.”
Matar, 26, has been held without bail since the attack, during which he stabbed Rushdie more than a dozen times in front of a stunned audience of about 1,500 people. Stab wounds blinded Rushdie in one eye. The event’s moderator, Henry Reese, was also injured before bystanders subdued the attacker.
“This defendant took the time and effort to travel to the Western District of New York with the intent to take the life of another person,” said U.S. Attorney Trini Ross. “Only because of the courageous efforts of those who were present that day was the defendant prevented from carrying out his murderous intent.”
Rushdie detailed the attack and his long, painful recovery in a memoir published in April.
The federal charges come after Matar earlier this month rejected an offer from state prosecutors to recommend a shorter prison sentence if he agreed to plead guilty to both the anticipated state and federal charges. Instead, both cases will now be tried separately. Jury selection in the state case is scheduled for Oct. 15.
A detention hearing in the federal case is scheduled for Aug. 7.
The author spent years in hiding after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for Rushdie’s death over his novel “The Satanic Verses.” Khomeini considered the book blasphemy. Rushdie resurfaced to the public in the late 1990s.
Matar was born in the US, but has dual citizenship in Lebanon, where his parents were born. He lived in Fairview, New Jersey, before the attack. His mother said her son became withdrawn and moody after visiting his father in Lebanon in 2018.
The attack has raised questions about whether Rushdie has received adequate security protection as he is still the target of death threats. A state trooper and a county sheriff’s deputy were assigned to the talk. In 1991, a Japanese translator of “The Satanic Verses” was stabbed to death. An Italian translator survived a knife attack in the same year. In 1993, the book’s Norwegian publisher was shot three times but survived.
The investigation into Rushdie’s stabbing has centered in part on the question of whether Matar acted alone or in conjunction with militant or religious groups.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
