Prosecutors in New York on Sept. 14 called on a Chautauqua County judge to withhold the names of witnesses in the stabbing of author Salman Rushdie from alleged attacker Hadi Matar until the trial draws closer.
During Matar’s court appearance on Wednesday, District Attorney Jason Schmidt requested that Judge David W. Foley put in place a protection order for witnesses, citing “specific information” his office has that the suspect poses a potential threat to the witnesses.
Schmidt reportedly noted that Matar may have been motivated to stab Rushdie, who authored the controversial 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses,” due to a $3 million bounty placed on the author’s head by the late Iranian cleric and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989….