Judge delays Salman Rushdie stabbing trial over planned release of memoir

Jan. 4 (UPI) -- A New York judge is set to postpone the trial of the man accused of maiming author Salman Rushdie in a 2022 stabbing as the writer prepares to publish a memoir about the attack.

Chautauqua County Judge David Foley ruled Wednesday that Hadi Matar -- accused of stabbing Rushdie more than a dozen times and partially blinding him as he prepared to give a lecture in August 2022 -- is entitled to preview Rushdie's manuscript, as well as the author's book notes, before the trial begins,

Matar, 26, of New Jersey, has remained jailed with no bond since being arrested and faces attempted murder and assault charges.

The trial in upstate New York was due to start Jan. 8, but now appeared likely to be postponed after Foley allowed extra time for the defendant to consider the delay to review the book and other materials.

Attorneys on both sides became aware of Rushdie's forthcoming book only a few days before the trial was scheduled to begin.

Following Wednesday's hearing, Matar's defense attorney Nathaniel Barone said he would take time to consult with his client on the matter, while pointing to the extensive amount of materials that needed to be examined, saying "it's not just the book."

"Every little note Rushdie wrote down, I get, I'm entitled to. Every discussion, every recording, anything he did in regard to this book," Barone told reporters outside the courthouse.

Barone was expected to issue a subpoena for the manuscript

Previously, Rushdie's legal team denied a request from prosecutors to get a copy of the manuscript, claiming the work was subject to intellectual property rights.

But District Attorney Jason Schmidt said he felt the book would have little if any impact on the trial, and that the upcoming book was being overhyped because the attack was widely documented after it was witnessed by a live audience.

"There were recordings of it," Schmidt said, suggesting the book would not shed new light on the attack, in which Rushdie lost his right eye while sustaining serious internal injuries, including lacerations to his liver and severed nerves in one of his arms.

The 76-year-old author eventually recovered, and 14 months after the attack announced that he had written about the traumatic experience for an upcoming book titled, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.

Rushdie called the book "necessary" as it would allow him to "take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art."

Rushdie's publisher, Penguin Random House, has not commented.

Rushdie became a pariah in Iran and spent many years in hiding after he published The Satanic Verses more than three decades ago, while subsequently surviving several attempts on his life.

In 1989, Iran's then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini accused Rushdie of blasphemy and called for his death, while a $3 million bounty was subsequently put on the author's head due to the book's fictional reimagining of the life of the Prophet Muhammad.

That same year, Rushdie escaped death in London when a bomber that was sent to kill him instead blew himself up accidentally with the explosives.

At the time of the stabbing attack at New York's Chautauqua Institution, world leaders cast suspicion on Iran's government due to its long record of vehemence toward the author, and after the assault was widely praised in Iranian media.