Salman Rushdie stabbing accused charged with attempted murder

The author’s agent said he off the ventilator and had started to talk again, and was making jokes in hospital.

Hadi Matar is arrested after the attack on Salman Rushdie. Picture: Twitter

The man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie at a literary event pleaded not guilty to attempted murder charges overnight on Saturday, as the severely injured author appeared to show signs of improvement in hospital.

Hadi Matar, 24, was arraigned in court in New York state’s Chautauqua, with prosecutors outlining how Rushdie had been stabbed approximately 10 times in what they described as a planned, premeditated assault.

After the on-stage attack on Friday (Saturday AEST), Rushdie had been helicoptered to hospital and underwent emergency surgery.

His agent, Andrew Wylie, had said the writer was on a ventilator and in danger of losing an eye, but in an update on Sunday AEST he told The New York Times Rushdie had started to talk again, and was making jokes, suggesting his condition had improved.

Matar is being held without bail and has been formally charged with second-degree attempted murder and assault with a weapon. Police provided no information on his background or what might have motivated him.

Salman Rushdie was rushed by helicopter to hospital. Picture: AFP

Author of The Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children, Rushdie had lived in hiding for years after Iran’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, ordered his killing.

While Friday’s stabbing triggered international outrage, it also drew applause from Islamist hardliners in Iran and Pakistan.

President Joe Biden called it a “vicious” attack and offered prayers for Rushdie’s recovery. “Salman Rushdie – with his insight into humanity, with his unmatched sense for story, with his refusal to be intimidated or silenced – stands for essential, universal ideals. Truth. Courage. Resilience,” Mr Biden said.

Anthony Albanese branded the attack as an assault on global freedom. “Terrible news of the sickening and cowardly attack on Salman Rushdie in New York,” the Prime Minister tweeted. “This senseless violence against a celebrated author is also an assault on global freedom of expression and deserves unequivocal condemnation. May he have a full recovery.”

Terrible news of the sickening and cowardly attack on Salman Rushdie in New York. This senseless violence against a celebrated author is also an assault on global freedom of expression and deserves unequivocal condemnation. May he have a full recovery.

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) August 13, 2022

Rushdie’s close friend and fellow novelist Ian McEwan called him an “inspirational defender of persecuted writers and journalists across the world”.

The 75-year-old novelist had been living under an effective death sentence since 1989 when Iran’s then-supreme leader Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill the writer.

The fatwa followed the publication of The Satanic Verses, which enraged some Muslims who said it was blasphemous for its portrayal of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.

In a recent interview with Germany’s Stern magazine, Rushdie spoke of how, after years of living with death threats, his life was “getting back to normal”. “For whatever it was, eight or nine years, it was quite serious,” he said in New York. “But ever since I’ve been living in America, since the year 2000, really there hasn’t been a problem in all that time.”

Salman Rushdie photograped in Paris in 2018. Picture: AFP

Rushdie moved to New York in the early 2000s and became a US citizen in 2016. Despite the continued threat to his life, he was increasingly seen in public – often without noticeable security.

Security was not particularly tight at Friday’s event at the Chautauqua Institution, which hosts arts programs in a tranquil lakeside community near Buffalo.

Rushdie was seated on stage and preparing to speak when Matar sprang up from the audience and managed to stab him before being wrestled to the ground by staff and other spectators.

Matar’s family appear to come from the village of Yaroun in southern Lebanon, though he was born in the US. Villagers said Matar’s parents were divorced and his father, a shepherd, still lived there. Matar was “born and raised in the US,” said the head of the local municipality, Ali Qassem Tahfa.

The Satanic Verses and its author remain deeply inflammatory in Iran. Nobody in Tehran’s main book market dared to openly condemn the stabbing. “I was very happy to hear the news,” said Mehrab Bigdeli, a man in his 50s studying to become a Muslim cleric.

The message was similar in Iran’s media, with one paper saying the “neck of the devil” had been “cut by a razor”. In Pakistan, a spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, a party that has staged violent protests, said Rushdie “deserved to be killed”.

Rushdie was propelled into the spotlight by his second novel, Midnight’s Children, in 1981, which won international praise for its portrayal of post-independence India. But The Satanic Verses, in 1988, transformed his life. The fatwa forced him into a decade in hiding, moving houses repeatedly and being unable to tell even his children where he lived.

AFP

Editorial P10