Hadi Matar, the man accused of nearly fatally stabbing British-American writer Salman Rushdie, is negotiating a plea agreement with both US state and federal prosecutors that could shed light on whether a foreign government or terrorist organization was involved in the attack, officials involved in the case told Semafor.
Matar is scheduled to go on trial for attempted murder this September in a western New York courthouse not far from the Chautauqua Institution where Rushdie was assaulted while giving a speech in August 2022 at a summer cultural festival. But federal prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office are separately investigating whether Matar, 26, was part of a broader conspiracy to assassinate the writer, according to lawyers and US officials involved in the case. The revolutionary founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, in 1989, calling for Rushdie’s death on the grounds that his novel, The Satanic Verses, was blasphemous against Islam.
This asshat is young and seems to have naively bought into the bullshit hawked by the Ayatollah. Obviously, he’s dangerous and predisposed to extremism, but what should happen now is a pretty difficult question (short term, definitely prison).
He’s twenty-six. We can dismiss youth as a contributing factor.
He was 24 at the time.
He was 24. We can dismiss youth as a contributing factor.