Pro-Palestinian protests sweep US college campuses following mass arrests at Columbia

Pro-Palestinian protests sweep US college campuses following mass arrests at Columbia
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Pro-Palestinian supporters rally on the campus of Columbia University on April 22, 2024 in New York City. (AFP)
Pro-Palestinian protests sweep US college campuses following mass arrests at Columbia
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Two student protesters converse at the Pro-Palestine protest encampment at the Columbia University campus in New York on Monday April 22, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 23 April 2024
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Pro-Palestinian protests sweep US college campuses following mass arrests at Columbia

Pro-Palestinian protests sweep US college campuses following mass arrests at Columbia
  • Columbia University canceled in-person classes and police arrested dozens of students at New York University and Yale
  • Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up encampments on other campuses around the country

NEW YORK: Columbia canceled in-person classes, dozens of protesters were arrested at Yale and the gates to Harvard Yard were closed to the public on Monday as some of the most prestigious US universities sought to diffuse campus tensions over Israel’s war with Hamas.
The various actions followed the arrest last week of more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia’s green, as schools struggle with where to draw the line between allowing free expression while maintaining a safe and inclusive campus.
In addition to the demonstrations at the Ivy League schools, pro-Palestinian encampments have sprouted up on other campuses, including the University of Michigan, New York University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The protests have pitted students against one another, with pro-Palestinian students demanding that their schools condemn Israel’s assault on Gaza and divest from companies that sell weapons to Israel. Some Jewish students, meanwhile, say much of the criticism of Israel has veered into antisemitism and made them feel unsafe, and point out that Hamas is still holding hostages taken during the group’s Oct. 7 invasion.
Tensions remained high Monday at Columbia in New York City, where the campus gates were locked to anyone without a school ID and where protests broke out both on campus and outside.
US Rep. Kathy Manning, a Democrat from North Carolina who was visiting Columbia with three other Jewish members of Congress to view the encampment, told reporters after meeting with students from the Jewish Law Students Association that there was “an enormous encampment of people” who had taken up about a third of the green.
“We saw signs indicating that Israel should be destroyed,” she said after leaving the Morningside Heights campus.
A woman inside the campus gates led about two-dozen protesters on the street outside in a chant of, ” From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! ” — a charged phrase that can mean vastly different things to different groups. Meanwhile, a small group of pro-Israel counter demonstrators protested nearby.
University President Minouche Shafik said in a message to the school community Monday that she was “deeply saddened” by what was happening on campus.
“To deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps, I am announcing that all classes will be held virtually on Monday,” Shafik wrote, noting that faculty and staff should work remotely when possible and that students who don’t live on campus should stay away.
Protests have roiled many college campuses since Hamas’ deadly attack on southern Israel, when militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. In response, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and non-combatants but says at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.
Prahlad Iyengar, an MIT graduate student studying electrical engineering, was among about two dozen students who set up a tent encampment on the school’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus Sunday evening. They are calling for a ceasefire and are protesting what they describe as MIT’s “complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” he said.
“MIT has not even called for a ceasefire, and that’s a demand we have for sure,” Iyengar said.
He also said MIT has been sending out confusing rules about protests.
“We’re out here to demonstrate that we reserve the right to protest. It’s an essential part of living on a college campus,” Iyengar said.
On Sunday, Elie Buechler, a rabbi for the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Learning Initiative at Columbia, sent a WhatsApp message to nearly 300 Jewish students recommending they go home until it’s more safe for them on campus.
The latest developments came ahead of the Monday evening start of the Jewish holiday of Passover.
Nicholas Baum, a 19-year-old Jewish freshman who lives in a Jewish theological seminary building two blocks from Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus, said protesters over the weekend were “calling for Hamas to blow away Tel Aviv and Israel.” He said some of the protesters shouting antisemitic slurs were not students.
“Jews are scared at Columbia. It’s as simple as that. There’s been so much vilification of Zionism, and it has spilled over into the vilification of Judaism,” he said.
The protest encampment sprung up at Columbia on Wednesday, the same day that Shafik faced bruising criticism at a congressional hearing from Republicans who said she hadn’t done enough to fight antisemitism. Two other Ivy League presidents resigned months ago following widely criticized testimony they gave to the same committee.
In her statement Monday, Shafik said the Middle East conflict is terrible and that she understands that many are experiencing deep moral distress.
“But we cannot have one group dictate terms and attempt to disrupt important milestones like graduation to advance their point of view,” Shafik wrote.
Over the coming days, a working group of deans, school administrators and faculty will try to find a resolution to the university crisis, noted Shafik, who didn’t say when in-person classes would resume.
Several students at Columbia and its sister school, Barnard College, said they were suspended for taking part in last week’s protests, including Barnard student Isra Hirsi, the daughter of Democratic US Rep. Ilhan Omar.
At Yale, police officers arrested about 45 protesters and charged them with misdemeanor trespassing, said Officer Christian Bruckhart, a New Haven police spokesperson. All were being released on promises to appear in court later, he said.
Protesters set up tents on Beinecke Plaza on Friday and demonstrated over the weekend, calling on Yale to end any investments in defense companies that do business with Israel.
Nadine Cubeisy, a Yale student and one of the protest’s organizers, said it was disturbing that “this university that I’m going to, that I contribute to and that my friends give money to is using that money to fund violence.”
In a statement to the campus community on Sunday, Yale President Peter Salovey said university officials had spoken to the student protesters multiple times about the school’s policies and guidelines, including those regarding speech and allowing access to campus spaces.
School officials said they spoke with protesters over several hours and gave them until the end of the weekend to leave Beinecke Plaza. The said they again warned protesters Monday morning and told them that they could face arrest and discipline, including suspension, before police moved in.
A large group of demonstrators regathered after Monday’s arrests at Yale and blocked a street near campus, said Bruckhart. There were no reports of any violence or injuries.
Last week, the University of Southern California took the unusual step of canceling a planned commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian, who had publicly supported Palestinians. The university cited security concerns in a decision that was praised by some pro-Israel groups but criticized by free-speech advocates.


US hits international court’s top prosecutor with sanctions after Trump’s order

US hits international court’s top prosecutor with sanctions after Trump’s order
Updated 57 min 18 sec ago
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US hits international court’s top prosecutor with sanctions after Trump’s order

US hits international court’s top prosecutor with sanctions after Trump’s order
  • The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes in Gaza

UNITED NATIONS: The US sanctioned the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Thursday, following up on President Donald Trump’s order last week targeting the court over its investigations of Israel.
The prosecutor, Karim Khan, was added Thursday to Washington’s list of “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons.” Those on the list are barred from doing business with Americans and face restrictions on entry to the US
The Hague-based court is tasked with prosecuting war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The US never has recognized the ICC’s authority, and Trump has criticized the court for years. His first administration sanctioned Khan’s predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, and the Biden administration subsequently lifted those sanctions.
After returning to office last month, Trump signed a Feb. 6 executive order imposing sanctions on the ICC. He accused the court of “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel,” citing the ICC’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes in Gaza. They deny the accusations, and Netanyahu has called the warrant “absurd.”
Trump’s order foreshadowed “tangible and significant consequences” for those responsible for the court’s “transgressions.” Khan was seen as a likely figure.
The court’s president has condemned Trump’s order, and United Nations deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq on Thursday called the ICC “a fundamental pillar of international justice.”
The court is independent, but the UN was instrumental in creating it, and the ICC’s top prosecutor sometimes briefs the UN Security Council.
The Trump administration didn’t immediately say whether Khan would be allowed to travel to the UN headquarters in New York.
Meanwhile, the court’s oversight body has asked a UN watchdog agency to investigate allegations that Khan tried to coerce a female aide into a sexual relationship and groped her against her will, according to an AP investigation. He has said there’s “no truth” to the claim.


Mass firings of federal workers begins as Trump and Musk purge US government

Mass firings of federal workers begins as Trump and Musk purge US government
Updated 14 February 2025
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Mass firings of federal workers begins as Trump and Musk purge US government

Mass firings of federal workers begins as Trump and Musk purge US government
  • OPM probationary staff fired in group call

WASHINGTON: Mass firings at multiple US government agencies have begun as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk accelerate their purge of America’s federal bureaucracy, union sources and employees familiar with the layoffs told Reuters on Thursday.
Termination emails have been sent in the past 48 hours to scores of government workers, mostly recently hired employees still on probation, at the Department of Education, the Small Business Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the General Services Administration, which manages many federal buildings.
All probationary staff at the Office of Personnel Management, the human resources arm for the US government, were fired in a group call on Thursday and told to leave the agency’s headquarters in Washington by 3 p.m. ET (2000 GMT), two sources told Reuters.
OPM officials also met with other government agencies on Thursday and advised them to lay off their probationary employees, with some exceptions, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Trump and Tesla CEO Musk’s overhaul of the federal government appeared to be widening as Musk aides arrived for the first time at the federal tax-collecting agency, the Internal Revenue Service, and US embassies were told to prepare for staff cuts.
It was not immediately clear on Thursday how many domestic federal workers stood to lose their jobs in the first wave of layoffs. But the move fulfills Trump’s vow to reduce the size of the federal government and root out the “deep state,” a reference to bureaucrats he views as not sufficiently loyal to him.
“The Agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment with the Agency,” letters sent to at least 45 probationers at the SBA stated.
Reuters has seen a copy of the termination letter.
Letters to at least 160 recent hires at the Department of Education, also seen by Reuters, told them that their continued employment “would not be in the public interest.”
Trump, a Republican serving his second term, repeatedly called for the elimination of the Department of Education during his presidential campaign. On Wednesday, he called it a “con job” and said he wants it closed.
About 100 probationary employees received termination letters on Wednesday at the GSA, according to two people familiar with the firings.
One GSA employee, who said he had one month left until his probation period ended and had been receiving excellent performance reviews, was told this week he will be fired on Friday.
“Up until two weeks ago, this was an absolute dream job. Now it’s become an absolute nightmare because of what is going on. I have small children and a mortgage to pay,” the worker told Reuters.
According to government data, about 280,000 civilian government workers were hired less than two years ago, with most still on probation.
Musk’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story, but a spokesperson for OPM said the firings were in line with new government policy.
“The Trump administration is encouraging agencies to use the probationary period as it was intended: as a continuation of the job application process, not an entitlement for permanent employment,” the spokesperson said.
About 75,000 workers have signed up for the buyout, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters. That is equal to 3 percent of the civilian workforce.
The deadline to take the offer expired on Wednesday evening. Asked why workers were not given extra time to consider the buyout so more would take it, Leavitt said, “I’m not so sure that we didn’t hit the numbers we wanted.”

Massive downsizing
Trump has tasked the South African-born Musk and his team at DOGE, a temporary government agency, to undertake a massive downsizing of the 2.3 million-strong civilian federal workforce.
Musk, the world’s richest person, has sent DOGE members into at least 16 government agencies, where they have gained access to computer systems with sensitive personnel and financial information, and sent workers home.
Gavin Kliger, a top staffer in DOGE, arrived at a new agency, the IRS, on Thursday, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
It was the first time a Musk aide has entered the IRS, a longtime target of Republicans who claim without evidence that the Biden administration weaponized the agency to target small businesses and middle-class Americans with unnecessary audits.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has asked US embassies worldwide to prepare for staff cuts, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as part of the president’s effort to overhaul the US diplomatic corps.
Trump’s overhaul of government has sown panic among thousands of federal workers in the US capital who fear they may be targeted next.
In a video call addressing the World Government Summit in Dubai on Thursday, Musk said, “We do need to delete entire agencies.”
Trump has pressed ahead with the effort despite a barrage of lawsuits from labor unions and Democratic attorneys general and criticism, including from several Republican budget experts, that the initiative is ideologically driven.
Trump has defended the effort, saying the federal government is too bloated and that too much money is lost to waste and fraud. While there is bipartisan agreement on the need for government reform, critics have questioned the blunt force approach of Musk, who has amassed extraordinary influence in the first weeks of Trump’s presidency.


Texas to execute man for 2004 murders of strip club manager and friend

Texas to execute man for 2004 murders of strip club manager and friend
Updated 14 February 2025
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Texas to execute man for 2004 murders of strip club manager and friend

Texas to execute man for 2004 murders of strip club manager and friend
  • Tabler was condemned for the 2004 killing of Mohammed-Amine Rahmouni and Haitham Zayed in Central Texas

AUSTIN, Texas: A Texas man who killed his strip club manager and another man, then later prompted a massive lockdown of the state prison system when he used a cellphone smuggled onto death row to threaten a lawmaker, was scheduled to be executed Thursday.
Richard Lee Tabler, 46, would be the second inmate executed in Texas in a little over a week, with two more scheduled by the end of April. He is set to receive a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.
Tabler was condemned for the Thanksgiving 2004 shooting deaths of Mohammed-Amine Rahmouni, 28, and Haitham Zayed, 25, in a remote area near Killeen in Central Texas. Rahmouni was the manager of a strip club where Tabler worked until he was banned from the place. Zayed was a friend of Rahmouni, and police said both men were killed in a late-night meeting to buy some stolen stereo equipment that was actually a planned ambush.
Tabler also confessed to killing two teenage girls who worked at the club, Tiffany Dotson, 18, and Amanda Benefield, 16. He was indicted but never tried in their killings.
Tabler has repeatedly asked the courts that his appeals be dropped and that he be put to death. He also has changed his mind on that point several times, and his attorneys have questioned whether he is mentally competent to make that decision. Tabler’s prison record includes at least two instances of attempted suicide, and he was previously granted a stay of execution in 2010.
“Petitioner has spent the last twenty years in the Courts, and see’s no point in wasting this Courts time, nor anyone else’s,” Tabler wrote to the state Court of Criminal Appeals on Dec. 9, 2024, after his current execution date was set.
Tabler’s death row phone calls in 2008 to state Sen. John Whitmire, who is now the mayor of Houston, prompted an unprecedented lockdown of more than 150,000 inmates in the the nation’s second-largest prison system. Some were confined to their cells for weeks while officers swept more than 100 prisons to seize hundreds of items of contraband, including cellphones.
Whitmire led a Senate committee with oversight of state prisons, and said at the time that Tabler warned him that he knew the names of his children and where they lived. Whitmire, through a spokesperson at the mayor’s office, declined to comment on Tabler’s pending execution.
Also Thursday, in Florida, a man convicted of killing a husband and wife during a fishing trip at a remote farm while their toddler looked on was scheduled to receive a lethal injection in that state’s first execution this year.
The ACLU appealed Tabler’s case to the US Supreme Court last year, claiming he was denied adequate legal representation during his lower court appeals by attorneys who refused to participate in hearings at what they said was his request.
The ACLU appeal argued that Tabler’s attorneys ignored a psychological exam that determined he had a “deep and severe constellation of mental illnesses” that had been ignored since childhood. The court refused to halt his execution.
Tabler worked at a bar called TeaZers, and investigators said he had a conflict with his boss, Rahmouni, who allegedly said he could have Tabler’s family “wiped out” for $10.
Tabler recruited a friend, a soldier at nearby Fort Cavazos, and lured Rahmouni and Zayed to a meeting. Tabler shot them both in their car, then pulled Rahmouni out and had the friend record a video of him shooting Rahmouni again.
Tabler later confessed to the killings. During the sentencing phase of his trial, prosecutors introduced Tabler’s written and videotaped statements that he also killed Dotson and Benefield days later because he was worried they would tell people he killed the men.
Investigators said that before he was arrested, Tabler called the Bell County Sheriff’s Office to taunt deputies about the murders and threatened to kill more strip club employees and undercover law enforcement at the club.


Russia rejoices at Trump-Putin call as Zelensky rejects talks without Ukraine present

Russia rejoices at Trump-Putin call as Zelensky rejects talks without Ukraine present
Updated 14 February 2025
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Russia rejoices at Trump-Putin call as Zelensky rejects talks without Ukraine present

Russia rejoices at Trump-Putin call as Zelensky rejects talks without Ukraine present
  • Trump’s change of tack seemed to identify Putin as the only player that matters in ending the fighting and looked set to sideline Zelensky, as well as European governments, in any peace talks
  • Zelensky said he would not accept any negotiations about Ukraine that do not include his country in the talks

Russian officials and state media took a triumphant tone Thursday after President Donald Trump jettisoned three years of US policy and announced he would likely meet soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate a peace deal in the almost three-year war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, said he would not accept any negotiations about Ukraine that do not include his country in the talks. European governments also demanded a seat at the table.
Trump’s change of tack seemed to identify Putin as the only player that matters in ending the fighting and looked set to sideline Zelensky, as well as European governments, in any peace talks. The Ukrainian leader recently described that prospect as “very dangerous.”
Putin has been ostracized by the West since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of its neighbor, and in 2023 the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader alleging war crimes.
Trump’s announcement created a major diplomatic upheaval that could herald a watershed moment for Ukraine and Europe.

 

Russia rejoices at Putin’s spotlight role
Russian officials and state-backed media sounded triumphant after Wednesday’s call between Trump and Putin that lasted more than an hour.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that the “position of the current (US) administration is much more appealing.”
The deputy chair of Russia’s National Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, said in an online statement: “The presidents of Russia and the US have talked at last. This is very important in and of itself.”
Senior lawmaker Alexei Pushkov said the call “will go down in the history of world politics and diplomacy.”
“I am sure that in Kyiv, Brussels, Paris and London they are now reading Trump’s lengthy statement on his conversation with Putin with horror and cannot believe their eyes,” Pushkov wrote on his messaging app.

Screenshot showing an opinion column on Ria Novosti about the Trump-Putin call.

Russian state news agency RIA Novosti said in an opinion column: “The US finally hurt Zelensky for real,” adding that Trump had found “common ground” with Putin.

“This means that the formula ‘nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine’ — a sacred cow for Zelensky, the European Union and the previous US administration — no longer exists. Moreover, the opinion of Kyiv and Brussels (the European Union) is of no interest to Trump at all,” it added.
The pro-Kremlin Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda went even further and published a column stating in the headline that “Trump signed Zelensky’s death sentence.”
“The myth of Russia as a ‘pariah’ in global politics, carefully inflated by Western propaganda, has burst with a bang,” the column said.
 

Screenshot showing an article on Komsomolskaya Pravda about the Trump-Putin call.

Zelensky won’t accept talks without Ukraine
In his first comments to journalists since Trump held individual calls first with Putin and then Zelensky, the Ukrainian leader conceded that it was “not very pleasant” that the American president spoke first to Putin. But he said the main issue was to “not allow everything to go according to Putin’s plan.”
“We cannot accept it, as an independent country, any agreements (made) without us,” Zelensky said as he visited a nuclear power plant in western Ukraine.
During the conversation with Trump on Wednesday, Zelensky said, the US president told him he wanted to speak to both the Russian and Ukrainian leaders at the same time.
“He never mentioned in a conversation that Putin and Russia was a priority. We, today, trust these words. For us it is very important to preserve the support of the United States of America,” Zelensky said.

 

Alarm bells ring in Europe and NATO
Trump appears ready to make a deal over the heads of Ukraine and European governments.
He also effectively dashed Ukraine’s hopes of becoming part of NATO, which the alliance said less than a year ago was an “irreversible” step, or getting back the parts of its territory captured so far by the Russian army. Russia currently occupies close to 20 percent of the country.
The US administration’s approach to a potential settlement is notably close to Moscow’s vision of how the war should end. That has caused alarm and tension within the 32-nation NATO alliance and 27-nation European Union.
Some European governments that fear their countries could also be in the Kremlin’s crosshairs were alarmed by Washington’s new course, saying they must be part of negotiations.
“Ukraine, Europe and the United States should work on this together. TOGETHER,” Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote Wednesday on social media.

 

EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said: “It is clear that any deal behind our backs will not work. You need the Europeans. You need the Ukrainians.”
Others balked at Trump’s overtures and poured cold water on his upbeat outlook.
“Just as Putin has no intention of stopping hostilities even during potential talks, we must maintain Western unity and increase support … to Ukraine, and political and economic pressure on Russia,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said. “Our actions must show that we are not changing course.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it was right for Trump to speak to Putin, and Scholz noted that he had done so himself as recently as November. He said “a dictated peace” would never win European support.
“We also will not accept any solution that leads to a decoupling of American and European security,” Scholz said. “Only one person would benefit from that: President Putin.”
 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz answers questions in a ZDF program  in Berlin, Germany, on February 13, 2025. (REUTERS)

A Ukrainian soldier is resigned to Trump and Putin talking
A soldier from Ukraine’s 53rd Brigade fighting in the eastern Donetsk region said it was normal for Trump and Putin to speak to each other.
“If dialogue is one way to influence the situation, then let them talk — but let it be meaningful enough for us to feel the results of those talks,” the soldier said, insisting on anonymity due to security risks for her family in occupied Ukrainian territory.
But she was skeptical about the negotiations, given the incompatible demands tabled in the past by Russia and Ukraine.
“The conditions are unacceptable for everyone. What we propose doesn’t work for them, and what they propose is unacceptable for us,” she said. “That’s why I, like probably every soldier here, believe this can only be resolved by force.”
A Ukrainian army officer, who said he’s in touch with more than 40 brigades, said the troops he regularly speaks with don’t want a peace deal at any price even as they are desperate for more Western military aid.
“The stock we currently have, in terms of ammunition, is enough to last two or three weeks, maybe a month,” he told The Associated Press, asking that his name not be used because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.
“We definitely cannot deal with it on our own,” he added.
 


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

Man injured alongside Salman Rushdie in 2022 stabbing attack says he thought it was a prank at first
Updated 14 February 2025
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Man injured alongside Salman Rushdie in 2022 stabbing attack says he thought it was a prank at first

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 US 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-US citizen, born in the US 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.