The author of satanic verses, targeted by a fatwa in 1989, is on a ventilator after an emergency operation. The assailant was charged with attempted murder and assault.
New York
« The news is not good “warned American literary agent Andrew Wylie on Friday evening. Hours earlier, famed writer Salman Rushdie had been stabbed by an assailant as he prepared to take to the stage at the Chautauqua Institution literature festival in upstate New York.
75-year-old Salman Rushdie was alive after being quickly evacuated by helicopter to the nearest hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania. But his injuries do not bode well: he was repeatedly struck in the neck, face and abdomen, ” Salman will probably lose an eyeadded Andrew Wylie. The nerve endings in his arm are severed, his liver has been stabbed and he is damaged ».
The author of ” satanic verses “, which romanticized part of the life of the Prophet Muhammad and earned him a fatwa (religious decree) from the Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on February 14, 1989, would have regained consciousness after a surgical operation lasting several hours, but he would be on life support. and unable to speak.
The attacker’s name is Hadi Matar, is 24 years old and is believed to be from Fairview, New Jersey, directly opposite Manhattan along the Hudson River. His motives are not yet known. Investigators are said to have recovered a backpack and several electronic devices from the scene of the attacks, which a warrant will allow them to examine. In a statement released Saturday, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said the attacker has been charged with attempted murder and assault. “He was arraigned on those charges last night and remanded in custody without bail“, adds the press release.
Witnesses described a blistering attack, which occurred at 10:47 a.m., and a fierce struggle to neutralize the assailant as he continued to stab his victim. “ It took five people to get him out of the waysays Linda Abrams, who was in the front row in the amphitheater of the foundation at the origin of the invitation of Rushdie. He was just mad, completely mad. So strong, and just so fast “. A uniformed police officer then reportedly managed to handcuff Hadi Matar as the bloody knife fell from his hands.
Immediately surrounded by spectators, Salman Rushdie was initially lying on the ground while waiting for help to arrive, while spectators commented: “ his pulse is beating, his pulse is beating ».
New York State Police Commissioner Eugene Staniszewski told a press conference that a joint investigation had been opened with the FBI. Aged 41 when the fatwa enacted against him, his head put a price on several million dollars by the Iranian Shiite regime, the British writer of Indian origin, who then lived in London, had to go into forced hiding. This forced exile was to last three decades, until at age 71, he resolved to leave. “ Oh, I gotta live my life he retorted to those who urged him to remain cautious.
Since then, Salman Rushdie, author of fifteen books and novels, regularly intervened at literary and charity events near New York where he lived. And more often than not, without any apparent security.
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His attack provoked enthusiastic reactions among religious ultra-conservatives in Iran. A quote from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dating back several years, was quoted extensively online: the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the Iranian cleric assured, is ” a bullet that has been fired and will not stop until it hits its target ».
In Washington, national security adviser Jake Sullivan was careful not to openly incriminate Tehran, specifying however that such ” act of violence was appalling », « praying for speedy recovery from the injured writer.
Fatwa
It is ” one of the greatest defenders of freedom of expressionsaid the moderator of the literary event, Ralph Henry Reese, aged 73 and slightly injured in the face during the attack. We admire him and are deeply concerned for his life. The fact that this attack happened in the United States is indicative of the threats to writers from many governments, individuals and organizations. ».
Shaken, the director of the writers’ association PEN America, Suzanne Nossel, said she had ” not aware of a comparable incident during a public attack on a literary author on American soil ».
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« Today’s attack on Salman Rushdie was also an attack on one of our most sacred values, the free expression of thought “, for his part, commented the governor of the State of New York, Kathy Hochul.
« The Satanic Verses remain banned to this day in Bangladesh, Sudan, Sri Lanka, and India. Before Rushdie, the Japanese translator of ” Verses “, Hitoshi Igarashi, had been stabbed to death on July 12, 1991 at the University of Tsukuba, the investigation pointing the finger at the Corps of the Guards of the Islamic Revolution (IRGC), the famous pasdarans. His Italian counterpart, Ettore Capriolo, had narrowly escaped the same fate two weeks earlier, on July 3, 1991 in Milan. Norwegian publisher William Nygaard was shot three times at his home in Oslo on October 11, 1993, by two individuals later identified as a Lebanese national and an Iranian diplomat.
The fatwa against Salman Rushdie remains valid, although an Iranian president, Mohammed Khatami, said in 1998 that Tehran no longer supported its implementation. Al-Qaeda blacklisted the writer in 2010. Two years later, an Iranian religious foundation reportedly even raised the reward for his murder to $3.3 million.