Renowned novelist Salman Rushdie is on a respirator after being stabbed in the neck and abdomen Friday morning while preparing to speak at the Chautauqua Institute in western New York, his deputy said. The person said
Rushdie was taken by helicopter to the hospital Friday morning and underwent several hours of surgery at a nearby trauma center, Rushdie’s agent Andrew Wiley said. new york times.
“The news is not good,” Wiley told the newspaper. “Salman is likely to lose one of his eyes. A nerve in his arm has been severed. His liver has been damaged by a stab wound.”
Police have arrested 24-year-old Hadi Matar in connection with Friday’s attacks. Matar of New Jersey had posted on his social media in support of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Shia militants. new york post report.
“People say, ‘He [Rushdie] He has a pulse, he has a pulse,” said one eyewitness to the attack and its aftermath. new york timesAnother witness said, Times “There was only one attacker”, “He was dressed in black. He was dressed in loose black. He ran up to him with lightning speed.”
Rushdie has lived under the threat of assassination since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — then supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran — issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for the author’s murder. devil’s poemwas published in 1988 and contained what some considered to be offensive and profane depictions of the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad.
Britain and Iran ended diplomatic ties with each other over the fatwa and only re-established ties in 1998 when then-Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said he would neither support nor interfere with the assassination operation in Rushdie.
Rushdie has a bounty of more than $3 million on his head from Iranian religious groups.
Law enforcement sources reportedly said, new york post Preliminary investigations have revealed that Matar has posted on social media in support of Iran and its Revolutionary Guard, as well as Shia militants.
However, New York State Police believe there is “no indication of motive at this time,” and that Mattar acted alone.
PEN America, the free speech and human rights organization of which Rushdie was chairman, released a statement from CEO Suzanne Nossel.
“Penn America was shocked by the words of the brutal and premeditated attack on former president and staunch ally Salman Rushdie, who was reportedly stabbed multiple times during a speech at the Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York. I am horrified, and I can think of no incident comparable to the violent public attack on a literary writer in America,” Nossel wrote.
“Just hours before the attack, on Friday morning, Salman emailed me to help locate Ukrainian writers who needed safe haven from the grave danger they faced. Salman Rushdie. has been the target of his words for decades, but he never flinched, he tirelessly worked to help others who were vulnerable and threatened. I don’t know the origin or motives of this barbaric attack, but all the people in the world who have encountered violent language or asked for the same, this is what the writer connects. Dear readers, our thoughts and passions are now with the intrepid Saruman, and his perfect and swift execution. We wish him a speedy recovery, and we fervently hope and believe that his essential voice will never be silenced,” she continued.
At a press conference held Friday afternoon, New York Governor Kathy Hochul told reporters that she called Rushdie “a person who was there fearlessly despite threats in adulthood.” But Rushdie asserted that she was “in his care.” needs. She also praised the response of authorities at the scene, declaring, “It was a state trooper who stood up and saved his life.”
The attack on Rushdie comes in the context of increasing attacks by the Iranian regime. Last year, a plot to kidnap dissident Massey Alingjad, who now holds US citizenship and reports human rights abuses in Iran, was exposed by the Justice Department. On Wednesday, the DOJ revealed it had uncovered an assassination plot against the former national security adviser. John Bolton.