Matar, 24, was arrested on Friday after allegedly storming the stage of a literary event in New York and stabbing Rushdie as he prepared to speak. Rushdie’s agent said the novelist suffered stab wounds to his arm and liver in the attack, would likely lose an eye and was unable to speak because he had been put on a ventilator. Matar is also charged with assault in relation to a facial injury suffered by a man sharing the stage with Rushdie during the attack. Several people in the audience for the lecture at the Chautauqua Foundation, a nonprofit education and retreat center, said Matar was dressed in black and wearing a mask, leading several to initially think his entrance on stage was a staged spectacle before seriousness. of the situation became clear. “We thought maybe it was part of a ploy to show that there’s still a lot of controversy surrounding this author,” said Kathleen Jones, who was in the audience. “But it became apparent within seconds that it wasn’t.” He bought a ticket in advance for Rushdie’s appearance and arrived a day early carrying a fake ID. Matar lives in Fairview, New Jersey, and his home was searched by police and the FBI on Friday. He was born in the US to Lebanese parents who immigrated from Yaroun, a village in the south of the country, Ali Tehfe, the village’s mayor, told The Associated Press. According to NBC, the alleged attacker’s social media accounts show he sympathizes with extremist Shiite causes and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran’s leadership issued a fatwa – or decree – calling for Rushdie’s head in 1989 after the publication of his book The Satanic Verses, which many Muslims considered blasphemous. Threats on the author’s life put him under armed guard for almost a decade. However, it has not been confirmed that Matar was motivated by the long-standing threat on Rushdie’s life, with Eugene Staniszewski, a major in the New York State Police, saying on Friday that there was “no indication of a motive at this time”. Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian armed group in Lebanon, told Reuters it knew nothing about Matar. The attack, which has been condemned by the US and UK governments as well as Rushdie’s colleagues, was welcomed by some media in Iran. While the current Iranian regime has distanced itself from the threats made to Rushdie, the fatwa has never been officially lifted, and an accompanying reward backed by hardline groups has risen to more than $3 million relatively recently. The Kayhan newspaper, which is close to Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said “a thousand thumbs up” should go to the “brave and conscientious person who attacked the renegade and evil Salman Rushdie in New York.”
