Man injured alongside Salman Rushdie in 2022 stabbing attack says he thought it was a prank at first

MAYVILLE, N.Y. — A man injured alongside author Salman Rushdie in a knife attack on a New York lecture stage said Thursday that he tried to stop the assault once he realized it wasn't a prank and was left with a gash above his eye.

It took several stitches to close the cut, Henry Reese, 75, told jurors during the third day of testimony in the trial of Hadi Matar, the 27-year-old New Jersey man charged with trying to kill Rushdie and assaulting Reese.

Rushdie on Tuesday described being the target of the unprovoked and near fatal stabbing that began as he and Reese sat down for an armchair conversation as part of the Chautauqua Institution's daily summer lecture series.

Rushdie said he likely survived because of the actions of Reese and other bystanders who tackled and subdued the attacker. Rushdie, 77, was stabbed and slashed in the head, neck, torso, leg and hand and left blinded in one eye. During about an hour on the stand, he described lying in a “lake" of his own blood on the stage and aware he might die.

Reese said he initially thought the man he saw running toward Rushdie was part of “a prank.”

“At some point it became real, and I got up and tried to stop the attacker,” he testified.

A large audience had taken their seats in the institution's 4,400-seat amphitheater for the talk on keeping writers safe that August 2022 morning. Reese is co-founder of City of Asylum Pittsburgh, part of a network providing refuge for persecuted writers and artists that Rushdie inspired.

Rushdie, the author of “Midnight’s Children” and “Victory City,” spent years in hiding after the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for his death with a fatwa in 1989 following the publication of Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims consider blasphemous. But after Iran announced that it would not enforce the decree, Rushdie had traveled freely over the past quarter century.

A separate federal indictment alleges Matar, who was not yet born when the fatwa was issued, was motivated by a 2006 speech in which the leader of the militant group Hezbollah endorsed it.

A trial on the federal terrorism-related charges will be scheduled in U.S. District Court in Buffalo.

The current trial is expected to last at least through next week. Since Monday, jurors also have heard from employees of the Chautauqua Institution and others who either witnessed the attack or immediate aftermath.

Matar has kept his head down through much of the testimony, writing on a notepad and occasionally conferring with defense attorneys.

Matar is a dual Lebanese-U.S citizen, born in the U.S. to immigrants. In a jailhouse interview with the New York Post shortly after the attack, he did not refer directly to “The Satanic Verses” but called Rushdie someone “who attacked Islam.”

Several times since the trial's start, Matar has said “Free Palestine” while being led past reporters in or out of the courtroom.