Hadi Matar is accused of stabbing him during a literary celebration at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York on Tuesday in the case of British-Indian author Salman Rushdie.
Matar was escorted by observers before being taken into custody. He entered a not-guilty plea to the rape and attempted murder costs.
Rushdie vividly described the attack in vivid details during his hour-long speech.
Sudden strike
When he spotted a person rushing toward him from the right, Rushdie recalled how the event had just scarcely begun.
” I just saw him at the next minute”, he said. ” I was conscious of a person wearing a dark face mask and dark clothing. His eye, which were black and seemed very violent to me, really struck me.
The invasion was swift and terrible. ” First he hit me very hard”, Rushdie said. I believed he was punching me with his elbow, but I uncovered a lot of body pouring onto my clothing. He was hitting me constantly. Hitting and slashing”.
Rushdie tried to escape but was struck many times in the chest, neck, and stomach. ” I was trying to get to my foot, out of the seat, and get aside”, he said.
I believed I was going to die.
Rushdie described the excruciating pain and the sight of blood as he lay on the level.
My stomach and abdomen received a number of blows, they said. Three attack wounds down the centre of my chest”, he said. He recalled a particularly unpleasant eye injury that caused him to scream and lose vision in it.
” It occurred to me that I was dying. That was my primary idea”.
Cross-examination
Matar’s military lawyer, Lynn Shaffer, questioned Rushdie about his experiences of the invasion.
She opened with a gentle note:” I believe you said you are a author”?
Eventually, Shaffer mentioned that Rushdie made a film in Bridget Jones’s Diary, which she cherished. He said:” I am surprised. That was the work I did most of.
She also questioned whether pain might have an effect on storage. Rushdie acknowledged that he had wrongfully believed he had stood off when the intruder came in. However, when asked how many times he had been stabbed, he strongly responded,” I wasn’t counting at the time. I was then occupied, but afterwards I may see them on my system”.
Road to recovery
Rushdie spent 17 days in clinics and month in treatment. He admitted he has never fully recovered.
” I think I’m not quite at 100 %”, he said. ” I think I’ve substantially recovered but it’s probably 75-80 %. I’m hardly as lively as I was in the past. I’m not as physically strong as I was in the past.
The test is afoot.
