Salman Rushdie testified for the second time on Thursday in federal court in Buffalo, N.Y., as the terrorism trial of Hadi Matar moved back to the attack that nearly killed him four years ago.
The testimony came in a case built around the stabbing in a western New York amphitheater, with Rushdie once again describing the violence from the witness stand while the courtroom weighed the allegations against his alleged attacker. It was another step in a trial that has already pulled the assault back into public view day after day.
That is why the search for Rushdie lands now. The hearing is not about a past event in the abstract; it is about a live federal terrorism trial in Buffalo, where the central witness is the man who survived the attack. Rushdie’s appearance on Thursday followed a witness account on Wednesday that described video of the alleged assault, making the courtroom record more detailed as the case advances.
The friction in this case is hard to miss. Rushdie is testifying about being stabbed nearly to death four years ago, but the proceeding is framed around Hadi Matar as the alleged attacker. The gap between those two positions is what gives the trial its force: one man is speaking from the aftermath of the violence, while the other sits at the center of the government’s case.
Rushdie’s return to the spotlight has not been limited to court. He attended the premiere of Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie during the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 25, 2026, keeping the attack in view even before this week’s testimony. Matar, meanwhile, had already appeared in court on May 16, 2025, when he walked into the Chautauqua County court in Mayville, N.Y., in the case that preceded the federal trial now underway.
The next step is the one the courtroom record itself will define. Rushdie has now testified twice, and that makes his account one of the trial’s central pillars; what comes after is the usual work of a terrorism case, with the evidence set against the defendant and the jury left to sort out whether the government has proved its charge.
