The man charged with stabbing author Salman Rushdie in 2022 rejected a plea deal on Tuesday that would have shortened his state prison term but exposed him to a federal terrorism-related charge, the suspect’s lawyer said.
Hadi Matar, 26, has been held without bail since Rushdie’s attack, in which he is accused of stabbing the acclaimed author more than a dozen times and blinding him as he was onstage, about to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York.
Matar’s attorney, Nathaniel Barone, confirmed that Matar, who lived in Fairview, New Jersey, rejected the agreement on Tuesday in Mayville, New York.
The agreement would have had Matar plead guilty in Chautauqua county to attempted murder in exchange for a maximum state prison sentence of 20 years, down from 25 years. It would have also required him to plead guilty to a federal charge of attempting to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization, which could result in an additional 20 years, attorneys said.
Rushdie, who detailed the attack and his recovery in a memoir, had spent years in hiding after the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, in 1989 calling for his death over the writer’s novel The Satanic Verses, which some Muslims consider blasphemous. The author re-emerged into the public in the late 1990s and has traveled freely over the past two decades.
Matar was born in the US but holds dual citizenship in Lebanon, where his parents were born. His mother has said that her son had become withdrawn and moody after visiting his father in Lebanon in 2018.
Rushdie wrote in his memoir that he saw a man running toward him in the amphitheater, where he was about to speak about the importance of keeping writers safe from harm. The author is on the witness list for Matar’s upcoming trial.
Representatives for Rushdie did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.