Hadi Matar was first charged with attempted murder and assault for the 2022 attack which writer Salman Rushdie blind in one eye, and now faces a new charge of supporting Hezbollah.
More specifically, prosecutors say he provided material support to the Lebanon-based militant terrorist group, according to an indictment unsealed on Wednesday.
The federal charges come after Matar rejected an offer from prosecutors that would have sentenced him to prison for a shorter period of time if he pleaded guilty, reports the BBC.
Public evidence has not been provided, but Matar maintains his total innocence – though investigators now wonder if the attack against Rushdie was an individual or collective effort.
It remains unclear exactly why the 26-year-old New Jersey resident attacked one of Britain’s most important contemporary writers, though he told the New York Post, in an interview from jail, that he had watched videos of Sir Salman on YouTube, and that “I don’t like people who are disingenuous like that.”
Matar was born in the U.S. but holds dual citizenship in Lebanon, where his parents are from. His mother has said that her son became withdrawn and moody after he visited his father in Lebanon in 2018.
Salman Rushdie recalled Hadi Matar sprinting up the stairs and stabbing him 12 times in New York at a talk he was holding.
The attack nearly killed Rushdie and left him blind in one eye. He recently published a memoir on the attack and its aftermath.
The author spent years in hiding after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for Rushdie’s death over his novel The Satanic Verses.
Rushdie re-emerged in the West in the 1990s, but always remained on watchlists of extremist organizations. He continues to receive death threats.
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