Man arrested for stabbing Salman Rushdie will remain in jail without bail after pleading not guilty

Hadi Matar appears in court this Thursday in Mayville, New York. LINDSAY DEDARIO (REUTERS)

Hadi Matar, the young Shiite of Lebanese origin who last Friday stabbed writer Salman Rushdie during a conference in western New York, has pleaded not guilty on Thursday to charges of attempted murder and second-degree assault.

Matar, 24, born in California to Lebanese parents and living in New Jersey, remains in custody without bail.

The young man, a follower of the great Iranian ayatollahs, tried to execute the fatwa (religious edict) that sentenced Rushdie to death in February 1989 for his novel

, considered blasphemous by Tehran.

Rushdie was preparing to give a lecture at a cultural institution in Chaupauqua, near the town of Buffalo, when Matar, who had paid $200 for admission, came onstage, pounced on the 75-year-old author, and kicked him. a dozen stab wounds.

Wounded in the neck and abdomen, the British writer of Indian origin was evacuated to a nearby hospital in Pennsylvania, where he remains hospitalized with serious injuries to one eye and liver, although in a slow recovery phase.

Matar has appeared before a grand jury in the Chautauqua County Courthouse on both counts, the first carrying a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.

He remains in jail since he was arrested on the conference stand and his next appearance is scheduled for September 22.

The judge has barred Matar from approaching Rushdie and granted a request by his defense attorney to issue a temporary injunction barring the parties from discussing the case in the media.

The attack on Rushdie has provoked a wave of global outrage and countless acts of solidarity with the writer and the often precarious freedom of expression.

This Friday, at the headquarters of the New York Public Library, a group of well-known writers will hold a reading in tribute to Rushdie, who moved to the Big Apple in 2000, after living for almost a decade hidden and protected in the United Kingdom, and was a regular figure in the city's cultural gatherings.

In an interview published this Wednesday by

, Matar said he respects the memory and example of the great Ayatollah Ruholá Khomeini, the architect of the Islamic revolution of 1979 and also the author of the fatwa against Rushdie, but avoided saying if his edict had inspired the attack.

Matar also said that he had only read a couple of pages of

, and had seen YouTube videos of the writer.

"I don't like him very much," Matar said of the novelist, according to the

.

"He is someone who attacked Islam, attacked his beliefs, his belief system," he added.

Police believe he acted alone.

In the photo of his email appears the image of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the current spiritual leader of Iran, according to the newspaper

.

Iran also blamed the writer of the attack for having insulted the 1.5 billion Muslims, but denied any connection to the attack or its perpetrator.

According to investigators, Matar traveled to the Chautauqua Institution, an idyllic cultural retreat near Lake Erie, where he purchased the conference pass.

Witnesses to the attack explained that there were no obvious security controls at the entrance to the amphitheater, where some 2,500 people gathered to listen to the threatened author, a champion of freedom of expression who in recent years had relaxed security despite continuing to be threatened: the fatwa has never been revoked.

At the head of it, the Iranian authorities have put a high price: a reward for the executor of the fatwa that has been growing since 1989, with contributions from various entities of the regime, to exceed three million dollars.

Follow all the international information on