The trial started with prosecutors outlining their case against suspect Hadi Matar before they called two witnesses to the stand.

Hadi Matar is charged with attempted murder in the attack, which took place in 2022 as Mr. Rushdie was about to speak at an arts conference in western New York.

Jurors heard how a knife attack on novelist Salman Rushdie unfolded in a matter of seconds at a 2022 New York talk and how close he came to death, in the prosecutor's opening statement on Monday at the trial of the man accused of trying to murder the author.

Hadi Matar, who is on trial for the knife attack against the British author, has also been accused of supporting terrorism and attempting to carry out a fatwa calling for Rushdie's assassination.

Jurors heard on Monday how an attacker stabbed novelist Salman Rushdie more than a dozen times in a matter of seconds at a New York lecture, during the trial of the man accused of trying to murder the author.

Hadi Matar faces charges of attempted murder for attacking Rushdie. The now 77 year old was about to speak on protecting writers when Matar rushed the stage and stabbed him over a dozen times. The Booker Prize-winning author suffered partial blindness and lasting injuries to his hand.

Rushdie, who was raised in a Muslim Kashmiri family, went into hiding under the protection of British police in 1989 after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader,