The accused shooter, Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey, pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault at a court appearance on Saturday, his appointed attorney, Nathaniel Barone, told Reuters. Rushdie, 75, was about to give a lecture on artistic freedom at the Chautauqua Foundation in western New York when police said Matar rushed the stage and stabbed the Indian-born author, who lives with a bounty on his head from his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses” prompted Iran to urge Muslims to kill him. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register After hours of surgery, Rushdie was on a ventilator and unable to speak as of Friday night, according to his agent, Andrew Wylie. The novelist was likely to lose an eye and have nerve damage to his arm and lacerations to his liver, Wylie said in an email. Wylie did not respond to messages seeking updates on Rushdie’s condition Saturday, though the New York Times reported that Rushdie had begun talking, citing Wylie. The stabbing was condemned by writers and politicians around the world as an attack on freedom of expression. In a statement Saturday, President Joe Biden praised the “universal ideals” that Rushdie and his work embody. “Truth. Courage. Resilience. The ability to share ideas without fear,” Biden said. “These are the building blocks of any free and open society.” Neither local nor federal authorities released additional details about the investigation Saturday. Police said on Friday that they had not ascertained a motive for the attack. An initial review of Matar’s social media accounts indicated he was sympathetic to Shiite extremism and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), though no definitive links had been found, according to NBC New York. The IRGC is a powerful faction that controls a business empire as well as elite armed and intelligence forces that Washington accuses of waging a global extremism campaign. Asked to comment on the case, Matar’s lawyer Barone said: “We’re kind of in the early stages and, frankly, in cases like this, I think the important thing to remember is that people have to keep an open mind. They need to, they can’t. just to assume that something happened for the reason that they think something happened.” A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for Friday, he said. Matar was born in California and recently moved to New Jersey, the NBC New York report said, adding that he had a fake driver’s license on him. He was arrested on stage by a state trooper after being wrestled to the ground by audience members. Author Salman Rushdie is taken to a helicopter after he was stabbed on stage before his scheduled speech at the Chautauqua Foundation, Chautauqua, New York, US, August 12, 2022, in this script taken from a social media video. TWITTER @HoratioGates3 /via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. read more Witnesses said he did not speak as he attacked the writer. Rushdie was stabbed 10 times, prosecutors said during Mattar’s arraignment, according to the Times. The attack was premeditated. Prosecutors told the court that Matar traveled by bus to the Chautauqua Foundation, an educational retreat about 12 miles (19 km) from the shores of Lake Erie, and bought a pass that admitted him to Rushdie’s speech, the Times reported. Attendees said no obvious security checks were done. The county attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment Saturday. FBI investigators went to Matar’s last listed address, in Fairview, a suburb of Bergen County just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, on Friday night, NBC New York reported. There was no visible police presence Saturday at the home, a two-story brick-and-mortar house in a Hispanic neighborhood. A woman who entered the home declined to speak to reporters gathered outside.
ABOUT HIS HEAD
Rushdie, who was born into a Kashmiri Muslim family in Mumbai, now Mumbai, before moving to Britain, has faced death threats over “The Satanic Verses”, which some Muslims consider to contain blasphemous passages. The book was banned in many countries with large Muslim populations. In 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran’s supreme leader, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling on Muslims to kill the author and anyone involved in the book’s publication for blasphemy. Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of the novel, was stabbed to death in 1991 in a case that remains unsolved. There was no official government reaction in Iran to the attack on Rushdie, but several hard-line Iranian newspapers praised his attacker. read more Iranian organizations, some linked to the government, have put up millions of dollars in reward money for Rushdie’s murder. Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said as recently as 2019 that the fatwa was “irrevocable”. Ali Tehfe, mayor of Yaroun in southern Lebanon, said Matar was the son of a man from the town. The suspect’s parents immigrated to the United States and he was born and raised there, the mayor added. Asked if Matar or his parents were affiliated with or supported the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, Tehfe said he had “absolutely no information” about their political views. A Hezbollah official told Reuters on Saturday that the group had no additional information about the attack on Rushdie. read more Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington. Additional reporting by Randi Love in Fairview, New Jersey, Rami Ayyub and Ted Hesson in Washington, and Timour Azhari in Beirut. Written by Nathan Layne and Joseph Ax. Edited by Alexander Smith and Daniel Wallis Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
