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.

The man said once he realized it wasn't a prank he tried to stop the attack, and ended up with a gash over his eye.