MAYVILLE, NY– The New Jersey man accused of repeatedly stabbing author Salman Rushdie is not interested in an offered plea deal that would shorten his time in state prison but expose him to federal prison on a separate terrorism-related charge, his lawyer said. lawyer Tuesday.
Hadi Matar, 26, sat silently in Chautauqua County Court as attorneys outlined a proposal they said was worked out between state and federal prosecutors and to which Rushdie had agreed in recent months.
Under the agreement, Matar would plead guilty in Chautauqua County to attempted murder in exchange for a maximum state prison sentence of 20 years, instead of 25 years. He would also plead guilty to a pending federal charge of attempting to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization, which could result in an additional 20 years, attorneys said.
Matar, who has pleaded not guilty, has been held without bail since his arrest in 2022 after prosecutors said he attacked Rushdie as the acclaimed writer was about to address an audience at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York. Rushdie was blind in one eye. Moderator Henry Reese was also injured.
Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said Rushdie, who was stabbed more than a dozen times and described the near-fatal attack and painful recovery in a memoir, “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder,” supports the “global resolution” that is proposed in the case, which could otherwise mean two separate processes.
“His preference was for an end to this matter,” Schmidt said. Without Rushdie’s approval, Schmidt said he would have been opposed to reducing the maximum state prison sentence given the nature of the attack.
“He entered Chautauqua County and then committed this crime, which is not only a crime against an individual, but a crime against the concept of freedom of speech,” Schmidt said.
Matar’s attorney, Nathaniel Barone, said Matar wants to take his chances at trial.
“He says, ‘What do I have to lose?’” Barone said after the hearing.
Judge David Foley ordered Matar to discuss the offer with Barone and provide a final response at his next appearance on July 2.
Rushdie, who turns 77 on Wednesday, spent years in hiding after Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, in 1989 calling for his death over his novel “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims consider blasphemous. Rushdie slowly began to reemerge into public life in the late 1990s, and he has traveled freely for the past twenty years.
After the onstage attack, investigators said they were trying to determine whether Matar, who was born nearly a decade after the release of “The Satanic Verses,” acted alone. The federal charges that prosecutors are reportedly considering point to the possibility that he did that. not.
“The approach is that it is a terrorist organization supported by countries in the Middle East, and that is the way they are dealing with it,” Barone said.
“The federal government is taking the position that there was support before it happened,” he said. “I think if they want to bring charges or get a conviction on terrorist charges, they’re going to have to show that there was prior support as part of a conspiracy.”
Barbara Burns, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice, declined to comment on the possible terrorism charge, explaining that the office does not confirm or deny investigations.
Matar was born in the US but has dual citizenship in Lebanon, where his parents were born. His mother has said her son changed, became withdrawn and moody after visiting his father in Lebanon in 2018. Schmidt has said that Matar had obtained an advance pass to the event at which the author spoke and arrived from New Jersey a day earlier with a fake ID.
Rushdie, whose works also include “Midnight’s Children” and “Victory City,” wrote in his memoirs that he saw a man running toward him in the amphitheater where he was about to speak about the importance of protecting writers from disaster.
The author is on the witness list should Matar’s trial proceed as planned for September in Chautauqua County.
