Prosecutor says the New Jersey man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie was trying to carry out a fatwa

Source: Associated Press

Prosecutor says the New Jersey man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie was trying to carry out a fatwa

By CAROLYN THOMPSON
Updated 4:46 PM EDT, July 24, 2024

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — A man who severely injured author Salman Rushdie in a frenzied knife attack in western New York was motivated by a Hezbollah leader’s endorsement of a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death, prosecutors said Wednesday in announcing new terrorism charges.

The three-count indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in Buffalo offered for the first time a potential motive for the 2022 attack on “The Satanic Verses” author.

Hadi Matar, a U.S. citizen from New Jersey, was attempting to carry out a fatwa, Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Kruly said. According to the prosecutor, Matar believed the call for Rushdie’s death, first issued in 1989, was backed by the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and endorsed in a 2006 speech by the group’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah.

“We allege that in attempting to murder Salman Rushdie in New York in 2022, Hadi Matar committed an act of terrorism in the name of Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization aligned with the Iranian regime,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a news release. “The Justice Department will prosecute those who perpetrate violence in the name of terrorist groups and undermine the basic freedoms enshrined in our Constitution.”

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/salman-rushdie-hezbollah-dc21d10a1da6fde94ce6b4642b0d4cf1