Jurors have watched videos showing Salman Rushdie being repeatedly stabbed on a stage in western New York while audience members gasped in horror at the attack that left the prized-winning novelist seriously wounded and blinded in one eye.

Salman Rushdie spoke calmly and with occasional dry humor as he testified on Tuesday against the man accused of trying to murder him, the first time the two have been in the same place since the 2022 knife attack on the novelist onstage at a New York arts institute.

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.

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

Feb. 14 marked the anniversary of the 1989 fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie by Iran’s Ayatollah. It was also the fourth day of testimony in the trial of Hadi Matar, the New Jersey man accused of stabbing the renowned author at the Chautauqua Institution in August 2022.

It was the first time since the stabbing that the 77-year-old author came face-to-face with the man accused of trying to kill him.

In his own words, author Salman Rushdie describes the moments when a stranger rushed at him on stage in western New York and began attacking him