(AFP) – Novelist Salman Rushdi explained on Tuesday the moment when a knife-wielding attacker raided on stage and tried to kill him with a crazy attack that blinded him in one eye.
The author of “The Devil's Poem” told the ju judge at the trial of his attacker, 23-year-old Hadi Matar in America and Lebanon, that Matar was “stabing and slashing” him.
“I knew this person was rushing to me on my right side,” he said, explaining how he was on stage at an arts event in New York State in August 2022. .
“I only saw him in the last moment.”
“I was incredibly shocked and dark, and looked very ferocious to me,” Rushdy said of the attacker wearing a Covid mask.
“It was a stab wound in my eye, and it was very painful and then I was screaming for the pain,” Rushdy said, adding that he was left in the “Lake of Blood.”
Mathal's legal team tried to prevent Iran's 1989 Fatva, who seeks murder over the blasphemous Asp in “The Devil's Poem,” from characterizing Rushdi as a victim of persecution.
Mathal is accused of stabbing Rushdee about 10 times with a 6-inch blade. He said when he was led to court, “Palestine will be free,” and did not respond as Rushdy began to provide evidence.
Rushdy dressed in a dark suit, biasing his distinctive glasses towards one lens, covering one eye.
Prosecutor Jason Schmidt said how Rushdee sat in his seat at the amphitheater in front of about 1,000 people.
“(Matar) powerfully and efficiently, and at speed, I made the knife ring to Mr. Rushdee over and over again,” Schmidt said.
Iran-backed Lebanese Shia extremist group Hezbollah backed Fatwa, the FBI said, and Mathal faces another charge in federal court on terrorist charges.
Matar previously told the media that he had only read two pages of Rushdee's novel, but believed that the author “attacked Islam.”
Rushdy, now 77, a British-American based in New York, suffered multiple stab wounds before a bystander could hold back the attacker.
Venue employee Jordan Steves rose to court on Monday to help others conquer him by “with the strength I can manage with my right shoulder and with my right shoulder.” He spoke about the method.
When asked to identify the attacker, he stepped into the glamorous courtroom and pointed at Matar.
Steves's colleague, Deborah Moore Kushmaul, said he picked up the discarded knife and handed it to the police.
“I could see the blood, I could see (bystanders) stacked up. Our audience, many of them, were elderly, screaming.” she said.
Mathal was “dangerously close” to killing Rushdi, Schmidt said he reported that the author was stabbed in his right eye as violently enough to have severed a light nerve.
Rushdi's Adam's apple was also partially lacerated, and his liver and small intestine penetrated.
“His blood pressure was low – he lost so much blood,” the prosecutor said.
Lynn Shaffer, one of Mathal's lawyers, said Monday that prosecutors would try to present the case as an “open closure.”
But “please pay attention to the assumptions made by police witnesses,” she said. “They are assuming something about Mr. Matal, which will affect the way they investigate.”
Rushdy lived in London quarantine ten years after Fatowa, but for the past 20 years he lived in New York relatively normally until the attack.
Last year he published a memoir called “The Knife,” where he recounted his near-death experience.
Iran denied any ties with the attackers, saying that Rushdi was the only one responsible for the incident.
