“He is off the ventilator, so the road to recovery has begun,” his agent, Andrew Wylie, wrote in an email to Reuters. “It will be a long time coming; the injuries are serious, but his condition is moving in the right direction.” Rushdie, 75, was to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Foundation in western New York about the importance of the United States as a haven for artists when police said a 24-year-old man rushed the stage and stabbed the novelist. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register The Indian-born author lived with a bounty on his head after publishing his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses,” which is considered by some Muslims to contain blasphemous passages. In 1989 Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for his assassination. The stabbing suspect, Hadi Matar of Fairview, New Jersey, pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault at a court appearance on Saturday, his court-appointed attorney, Nathaniel Barone, told Reuters. Neither local nor federal authorities have released additional details about the investigation, including a possible motive. An initial review of Matar’s social media accounts showed he was sympathetic to Shiite extremism and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to NBC New York. The IRGC is a powerful faction that Washington accuses of waging a global extremism campaign. Rushdie was airlifted to a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania for treatment after the attack. After hours of surgery, he had been placed on a ventilator and had not been able to speak since Friday night, Wylie said in an earlier health update, adding that he would likely lose an eye and have nerve damage in his hand and injuries to his liver . One of Rushdie’s sons said Sunday that his father remained in critical condition but was able to say a few words after coming off the ventilator. “Although his life-changing injuries are serious, his usual sharp and defiant sense of humor remains intact,” Zafar Rushdie wrote on Twitter. The stabbing was condemned by writers and politicians around the world as an attack on freedom of expression. In a statement on Saturday, President Joe Biden praised the “universal ideals” of truth, courage and resilience embodied by Rushdie and his work. 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 read more “These are the building blocks of any free and open society,” Biden said. Authorities in Iran have made no public comment on the attack, although hardline state media celebrated it with headlines such as “Satan is blinded” and some Iranians expressed support online for the stabbing. Many other Iranians expressed their sympathy for Rushdie, however, posting on social media their anger at the Islamic Republic’s clerical leaders for issuing a 1989 fatwa telling Muslims to kill the author.
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Iranian organizations, some linked to the government, have put up millions of dollars in reward money for Rushdie’s murder. Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said as recently as 2019 that the decree remained “irrevocable.” 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. Witnesses said Matar did not speak as he attacked the writer. He was arrested on stage by a state trooper after being wrestled to the ground by audience members. Rushdie was stabbed 10 times, prosecutors said during Mattar’s trial, according to the New York Times. 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 lecture, the Times reported. Attendees said no obvious security checks were done. Matar was the son of a man from Yaroun in southern Lebanon, according to Ali Tehfe, the town’s mayor. Matar’s parents immigrated to the United States, where he was born and raised, the mayor said, adding that he had no information on their political views. Tehfe told Reuters on Sunday that Matar’s father had returned to Lebanon several years ago and after word of Rushdie’s stabbing spread, he had locked himself in his home in Yaroun and refused to speak to anyone. The Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah wields significant influence in Yaroun, where posters of Khomeini and slain IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike in 2020, adorned walls over the weekend. 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 Reported by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut. Additional reporting by Maya Gebeily in Beirut and Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru. Editor: Daniel Wallis Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
