The radical accused of stabbing famed writer Salman Rushdie in upstate New York in 2022 ambled into court Tuesday, police escort in tow, as his trial kicked off with jury selection.

Hati Matar, a 26-year-old from New Jersey who allegedly nearly killed Rushdie, wore a blue button-up shirt and black pants as he entered the courtroom in tiny Mayville to a symphony of snapping cameras before sitting with his lawyers.

The alleged stabber stayed quiet except for telling the court, “Good morning” in a flat tone and waving at the jurors.

Otherwise, Matar scribbled notes and whispered to his lawyer as Judge David Foley parsed through 27 potential jurors — most of whom said they had already heard about the case.

“Same with everyone else — news, radio, everything,” one candidate said in response to a question about how he heard of the attack, before adding he likely couldn’t stay impartial.  

By the end of Tuesday’s proceedings, the court had picked five jurors — four women and a man — and rejected 22 others for a variety of reasons.

The trial should last a week to 10 days, Foley said, and opening statements could come as soon as next Monday.

Prosecutors said Rushdie, the author of “Satanic Verses,” will take the stand against his alleged knifer, who is accused of rushing the stage and stabbing him at least 10 times during a literary seminar at the local Chautauqua Institution in August 2022.

The 77-year-old novelist was left blind in one eye and suffered nerve and liver damage. The event moderator, Henry Reese, was also wounded.

Matar, who has been locked up without bail since his arrest, pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault charges.

He seemed unapologetic in an exclusive jailhouse interview with The Post days after the vicious attack.

“I don’t think he’s a very good person. I don’t like him,” Matar said of Rushdie at the time. “He’s someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems.”

Rushdie had gone into hiding after late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini put a $3 million bounty on his head in 1989 over his tome “The Satanic Verses,” which Muslims claim is blasphemous and disparages the Prophet Mohammed.

Rushdie emerged from his self-imposed exile in the 1990s and has since appeared at speaking engagements around the world.

Mata’s trial involving the 2022 attack on Rushdie at one of those events has been delayed twice already, and the suspect previously turned down a plea deal for a 20-year-to-life state prison sentence, down from a possible 25 years.

Matar — an American-born man with dual Lebanese citizenship — has insisted he acted alone and only read “like two pages” of the controversial Rushdie novel.

Residents in the town of Chautauqua, which includes the village of Mayville, told The Post on Tuesday that they are unsure if a local impartial jury can be assembled in the tiny upstate town of about 1,400 people 10 minutes southeast of Lake Erie.

“It’s something everyone is aware of,” Donald Grinde, a 78-year-old professor at the University of Buffalo, told The Post of the case as he waited for a table at the local restaurant Music for Your Mouth.

But his wife, Kari Winter, thought differently — saying mainly locals don’t pay attention to the news.

“I think he wants a stage to spew his venom — I’m sure he’ll like the attention,” she said about Matar, adding that her mom was in the audience the night of his attack.

Kari’s neighbor, a doctor, ran to help Rushdie and ended the night covered in blood.

“She said it was the most horrifying thing she witnessed even after years of working in an emergency room,” Winter said of the doctor.

“It was a tragedy, a horror,” she continued. “Everyone was gathering, everyone was crying so much. It was so sad.”

Matar is also facing separate federal terrorism charges in US District Court in Buffalo, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

A year after the near-fatal assault, Rushdie wrote, “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder” — and said he was lucky to have survived.