“Great Pain and Shock”: Author Salman Rushdie testifies in the judgment of his alleged attacker

Salman Rushdie described in graphic detail on Tuesday the frantic moments of 2022, when a masked man rushed to him in a stage in the west of New York and cut him repeatedly with a knife, leaving it with terrible and fearful injuries. That he would die.

Rushdie took position on the second day of witness at Hadi’s 27 -year -old Hadi’s trial, which was stated that he was not guilty of an attempt to murder and assault in the attack he also hurt another man. . It was the first time since the attack that the 77-year-old author met in the same room with the man accused of trying to kill him.

Rushdie recalled “a feeling of great pain and shock, and aware of the enormous amount of blood that was lying” after the attack.

“It happened to me that I was dying. This was my predominant thinking,” he said, adding that the people who subdued their assailant probably saved their lives.

When he explained the attack, his wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, cried from his seat to the second row of the room.

“I only saw him in the last minute,” Rushdie said about the man who rushed on the stage of the Chautauqua institution and stabbed him repeatedly with a 10 -inch leaf (25 centimeters).

Rushdie testified on Tuesday that he only saw his attacker in the last minute and called his eyes, which “seemed very fierce”. (Andy Krop/Invision/The Associated Press)

“I was aware of someone wearing black clothes, dark clothes and a black face mask. I was called my eyes, they were dark and looked very fierce.”

Rushdie said he first thought his knife attacker struck him with a fist.

“But I saw a large amount of blood poured into my clothes,” he said. “He hit me repeatedly. Hitting and cutting –

Rushdie said he struck the chest and torso more times and stabbed his chest as he struggled to escape.

“I was very injured. I couldn’t get up,” I fell, “he said.

Weeks of recovery

Rushdie was blinded in an eye in the attack.

He spent 17 days in a Hospital in Pennsylvania and more than three weeks in a New York City Rehabilitation Center, where he had to take advantage of the basic skills such as squeezing a tube’s toothpaste. He detailed his months of recovery in a memory launched last year.

Listen: Salman Rushdie talks to the CBC stream in the attack and how it goes on:

The current27:02Rushdie Salman during the 27 seconds that killed him almost

Although he said he is “substantially recovered”, he does not feel like “100 percent” yet.

“I’m not as energetic as before. I’m not as strong physically as before,” he said.

Kill, who was sitting about six meters from Rushdie in the courtroom, often looked at during his testimony.

The cross -examination begins

Lynn Schaffer, a public defender representing killing, started the cross exam asking the Booker Award winning author on his career. The question was brief, of low key and, for a moment, kind. She asked Rushdie if she would be surprised Bridget Jones diaryIn what makes a cameo, it was his favorite movie.

“I am surprised,” Rushdie said, joking that it was his “most important work.”

The only suggestion of a possible defense strategy was a question about whether the trauma can affect memories.

A man with a blue dress shirt looks among two other men in dresses, with his head down. All three seem to be standing, but they are shown from the waist up and are not confronted with the camera, but are captured at a sincere moment. — Hadi Matar, Center, is at the Defense Table with his lawyers before the start of the second day of his trial in the Caeling Court of Chautauqua, on Tuesday in Mayville, New York (Gene J. Puskar/The Associated Press)

Rushdie acknowledged that he had a false memory, which he thought he got up when he saw the attacker approaching, but that was not true.

Schaffer then challenged him to remember how many times he was hit.

“He did not count at that time. Other way he was busy,” Rushdie replied. “But then I could see them in my body. I don’t have to say anyone.”

No one asked Rushdie to identify his attacker in court and refused to be interviewed when he left the court after an hour of witness.

The security was significantly closer to the appearance of Rushdie, with several vehicles of the law parked outside the court.

On Monday, the employees of the Chautauqua institution, the non-profit Art and Education Center, where the attack occurred about 12 kilometers south of Buffalo-Van testified on the attack.

Kill has been in prison since the viewers were subjected to after the attack.

In a drawing, a man in a dress is spent and speaks, his arm raised with an extended finger, while a judge listens to the bottom and a row of silhouettes pay attention to the right side. — In this sketch of the courtroom, the district prosecutor, Jason Schmidt, presents his initial statement at the Hadi’s trial, Monday. (Elizabeth Williams through Associated Press)

The trial is expected to last up to two weeks.

It is unlikely that the jurors listen to a fatwa issued by the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who called for Rushdie’s death, according to district prosecutor Jason Schmidt. Rushdie, the author of The midnight children and Victory CityIt spent years hidden after Khomeini announced Fatwa in 1989 after the novel’s publication The satanic verseswhich was inspired by the life of the Prophet Muhammad and that some Muslims consider blasphemy.

“It’s not a wrong identity case”

Schmidt said that discussing the reason for killing would not be needed at the state trial, as the attack was seen by a live audience who was expecting to listen to Rushdie to present a conference on keeping writers safe.

“This is not a case of wrong identity,” Schmidt said during the opening statements on Monday. “Mr. Kill is the person who attacked Mr. Rushdie without provocation.”

Schaffer, the public defender representing killing, told the jurors that the case is not as simple as the prosecutors have done so.

A sketch shows a man in the process of planting -behind a desk he was sitting, with a woman who manages him while speaking. — In this sketch of the courtroom, public defender Lynn Shaffer asks his client, to kill, on the left, to put himself in his declaration of opening at the trial on Monday. (Elizabeth Williams through Associated Press)

“The crime elements are more than” something really bad “, they are more defined,” Schaffer said. “Something bad happened, something very bad happened, but the district’s lawyer has to show much more than that.”

In a separate accusation, the federal authorities claim that killing was driven by the endorsement of the 2006 terrorist organization in Fatwa. A subsequent judgment on accusations of federal terrorism will be programmed in the North -American District Court in Buffalo.

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