The man accused of stabbing author Salman Rushdie rejected a plea deal Tuesday that would have shortened his state prison sentence but exposed him to a federal terrorism-related charge, the suspect’s lawyer said.
Hadi Matar, 26, has been held without bail since the 2022 attack, in which he is accused of stabbing the acclaimed writer more than a dozen times as he was on stage about to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York. Salman Rushdie lost an eye in the incident.
Mr. Matar’s lawyer, Nathaniel Barone, confirmed that his client rejected the deal Tuesday in Mayville, N.Y.
The deal would have allowed Mr. Matar to plead guilty in Chautauqua County to attempted murder in exchange for a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, down from 25 years. It would also have required him to plead guilty to a federal charge of attempting to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization, which could have carried an additional 20 years, the lawyers said.
Mr. Rushdie, who detailed the attack and his recovery in a memoir, had spent years in hiding after Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or decree, in 1989 calling for his death because of Rushdie’s novel. The Satanic Verseswhich some Muslims consider blasphemous. The author re-emerged in the public eye in the late 1990s and has traveled freely over the past two decades.
Hadi Matar was born in the United States but holds dual citizenship in Lebanon, where his parents were born. His mother said her son became withdrawn and moody after visiting his father in Lebanon in 2018.
Mr Rushdie wrote in his memoirs that he saw a man running towards him in the lecture theatre, where he was about to speak about the importance of protecting writers from harm. The author is on the witness list in the upcoming trial of Hadi Matar.