Salman Rushdie’s alleged assailant seeks plea deal with US

The impending trial of Matar has generated only sporadic media attention, surprising given Rushdie’s public profile and the geopolitical implications of the attack. But if Matar reaches plea agreements with state and federal prosecutors, particularly on terrorism-related charges, this could change significantly.

The DA’s primary piece of evidence, Schmidt says, is video footage from the Chautauqua Institution that shows Matar rushing the stage on August 12, 2022 and stabbing Rushdie ten times in his face, hand and upper body. Matar also allegedly attacked the event’s moderator, Henry Reese. But the issue federal investigators are trying to establish is whether Matar acted as a lone wolf or received orders or material support from others — potentially Iran or Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group that Tehran arms and finances.

Court records and press reports portray Matar as a disgruntled youth who hated school, worked at a discount store, and failed in his efforts at becoming a professional boxer. His Lebanese-American father left for Lebanon when Matar was young. People who met Matar described him as a recluse who could simply have taken inspiration from the teachings of Khomenei and his fatwa against Rushdie.

But the picture Matar’s mother painted of her son reads like the textbook case of radicalization. Silvana Fardos told the New York Times that Matar traveled to Lebanon in 2018 — presumably to stay with his father in the southern town of Yaroun — and came back a totally changed person, deeply religious in the Shiite Muslim faith and a supporter of Iran’s Islamic revolution. “I have nothing to say to him,” Fardos told the paper.

Federal authorities are investigating whether Matar received military training by Hezbollah — or received instructions pertaining to Rushdie — during his visits to Yaroun, which sits astride Lebanon’s border with Israel, according to US and Arab officials. Any deal Matar’s lawyers cut with the US Attorney’s Office would almost certainly need to address any interactions he had with Hezbollah in the years leading up to the attack. Police found a fake driver’s license on Matar after his arrest that bore the name of Hezbollah’s top military commander, Imad Mugniyah, who was assassinated in 2008, allegedly by the CIA.

Iran’s possible role in the 2022 attack is also something federal investigators are probing, according to these officials. Tehran denied any involvement in the weeks after the attack, even though Iranian religious leaders praised Matar for seeking to carry out the fatwa. An Islamic organization — the Foundation to Implement Imam Khomeini’s Fatwas — offered him 1,000 square meters of agricultural land as a reward.

Even if Tehran played no operational role in the attack on Rushdie, federal prosecutors could argue Iranian officials and foundations were guilty of incitement. The State Department sanctioned Iran’s 15 Khordad Foundation in October 2022 for issuing bounties on Rushdie, including one for $3.3 million in 2012.

Rushdie published in April a 214-page account of the attack, called Knife: Mediations After an Attempted Murder. In the memoir, the writer describes his belief at the time that Khomenei’s fatwa was a relic of the past. Rushdie had resumed leading a largely normal life in New York after decades of hiding in the UK, he says. And very little security accompanied his appearance at the Chautauqua Institution amphitheater on the morning of August 12, 2022.

Rushdie recounts seeing a masked man charging the stage at Chautauqua just as a discussion – ironically, on the need to provide international artists with safe spaces – commences. “So my first thought when I saw this murderous shape rushing towards me was: ‘So it’s you. Here you are,’” Rushdie writes.

The author devotes a chapter to imagining a one-on-one discussion with Matar, whom he refers to simply as “A.” Rushdie pushes his would-be assassin during a mock interview on his motivations for attempting murder. But he never outright asks A. if he was trained by foreign terrorists or had received instructions from Tehran. “I’m trying to understand you,” Rushdie says to the imagined A. “Why were you so ready to ruin your life? Your life. Not mine.”

Rushdie also describes difficult discussions with his legal team about the possibility Matar could reach this plea agreement with state and federal prosecutors. Rushdie contemplates the possibility that Matar could be freed while the 76-year-old writer is still alive. “This guy is very young,” he concludes. “I don’t want him walking the streets when he’s forty-something, looking for me.”