Dressed in a black and white jail uniform,Matar stayed quiet during the hearing while his lawyer unsuccessfully tried to persuade the judge that he should be released while awaiting trial. Public defender Nathaniel Barone said Matar had no criminal record and wouldn’t flee the country if released.
Barone also asked the judge to do something to stop reporters from trying to contact Matar at the Chautauqua County jail. The lawyer said the jail had received “several hundred phone calls” from people trying to reach Matar.
Some of that media outreach resulted in Matar giving a brief interview toThe New York Post,in which he talked about disliking Rushdie and praised Iran’s late supreme leader,Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
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“I don’t like him very much,” Matar said of Rushdie,as reported in thePost. “He’s someone who attacked Islam,he attacked their beliefs,the belief systems.”
Khomeini issued an edict in 1989 demanding Rushdie’s death over his novel The Satanic Verses,which some Muslims consider blasphemous. A semiofficial Iranian foundation had posted a bounty of over $US3 million ($4.3 million).
Matar’s lawyer complained that the media coverage could potentially lead to a biased jury.