Mayville, NY – Salman Rushdie took the position of witnesses on Tuesday in the Attempt to judgment for murder against his accused attackerHadi kill.
Rushdie described in graphic detail the injuries that I almost took his life In the attack of 2022, and how he still lives with chronic pain.
It was the first time to kill, 27, and Rushdie were together in the same room from the brutal attack.
At the stretch of the witnesses, Rushdie described to be attacked the moment before being scheduled to go to a conference audience in western New York.
Rushdie recounts the details of the attack
Rushdie identified Kill. Killing, who was sitting about 20 feet away from Rushdie in the courtroom, often looked during his testimony.
“I only saw him at the last minute,” Rushdie said about the man who ran on the stage at the Chautauqua institution and repeatedly stabbed him with a 10 -inch blade.
“He was aware that someone wore black clothes, or dark clothes and a black face mask. He was very beaten by his eyes, which were dark and seemed very fierce.”
While recounted the attack, his wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, cried of his seat in the second row of the courtroom.
Rushdie said she first thought her attacker who pushes a knife was hitting him with a fist.
“I initially thought I had hit me. I thought it was a fist, I was hitting my fists. Very soon I saw a large amount of blood that poured on my clothes. I was hitting me repeatedly, hitting and cutting.” Rushdie testified.
The prosecutors said that killing stabbed Rushdie more than a dozen times, sinking the knife into his neck, thigh, hand and eye.
“The most painful and dangerous was stab in the right eye that left me blind. You can see … there is no vision at all,” Rushdie testified. “It occurred to me clearly that I was dying and that was my predominant thought.”
Rushdie said she was hit again on her chest and torso and stabbed on her chest while fighting to escape.
“I was very badly injured. I couldn’t get up anymore. I fell,” he said.
Rushdie told the jury that he had to learn to walk again after a significant loss of blood caused systemic weakness in his body. He testified that he spent 17 days at the hospital and underwent months of rehabilitation, and still does not have a complete function of one of his hands.
Rushdie recognizes the false memory of the attack
Lynn Schaffer, a public defender who represents to kill, began the interrogation by asking the Booker Prize winner about his career. The interrogation was brief, discreet and for a friendly moment. She asked Rushdie if he would be surprised that ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary “, in which he makes a cameo, was his favorite movie.
“I’m surprised,” said Rushdie, joking that it was his “most important work.”
In the interrogation, defense lawyers tried to make holes in the memory of Rushdie’s events. Rushdie agreed that trauma has a way of affecting how things are remembered.
He testified that he and kill had no contact before the attack.
“I think I’m not 100%. I think I’ve recovered substantially, but it’s probably 75 to 80%,” Rushdie testified. “I’m not as energetic as I used to be. I’m not as strong as it used to be.”
Rushdie and his wife left the court without talking to journalists.
The trial is expected to last up to two weeks.
The reason cannot arise in the trial
It is unlikely that the jurors listen to a fatwa issued by the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini asking for Rushdie’s death, according to the district prosecutor Jason Schmidt. Rushdie, the author of “Midnight’s Children” and “Victory City”, spent hidden years after Jomeini announced Fatwa in 1989 after the publication of the novel “The satanic verses”, which some Muslims consider blasphemous
Schmidt has said that discussing the reason for killing will be unnecessary in the state trial, since the attack was seen by a live audience that hoped to listen to Rushdie to present a conference to hold the safe writers.
“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 defense lawyer, told the jury that the case is not as simple as prosecutors have managed to be.
“The elements of the crime are more than” something really bad, “they are more defined,” said Schaffer. “Something bad happened, something very bad happened, but the district prosecutor has to demonstrate much more than that.”
In a separate accusation, federal authorities claim that killing was driven to act for the support of a terrorist organization in 2006 of the Fatwa. A subsequent trial on federal terrorism positions will be scheduled in the United States District Court in Buffalo.
Jessica Moore
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