in update
Hadi Matar jumped onto the stage moments before Salman Rushdie began speaking at the Chautauqua Institution in New York and stabbed the British writer more than a dozen times, after hitting the neck and abdomen of the author of “The Satanic Verses”. The 24-year-old New Jersey resident was initially detained by other participants in the gathering and later detained by authorities, and is currently being held at a police station in Jamestown near the scene of the attack.
In a press conference held late this Friday afternoon (local time), the New York police said that they believed that the attacker acted alone, but that So far the motives for the stabbing are unknown. – the investigation brings together local authorities and the FBI. It was further explained that Matar had a ticket to enter the event and that he went there alone.
Police have deployed a bomb unit to the scene and are awaiting a search warrant to analyze the crime zone, and have assured that there was no knowledge of any threat before Friday’s event.
Salman Rushdie stabbed in the neck at an event in New York. The suspect in the attack is 24 years old and is from New Jersey.
The author of “The Satanic Verses”, a book published in 1988, was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a year after its publication, on the charge that it was a blasphemous work for believers Muslims. The decision led Salman Rushdie to live in an uncertain part, under police protection, and the fatwa decreed by the Iranian leader, with the promise of a reward of three million dollars for whoever murdered the writer, ended up being the origin of the court of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Iran. Iran’s government has long distanced itself from Khomeini’s decree, but the anti-Rushdie sentiment remains.
In 2012, an Iranian religious foundation raised the reward for Rushdie’s murder to $3.3 million. Rushdie downplayed the threat at the time, saying there was “no evidence” that people were interested in the bounty. In that year, the writer published the memoirs “Joseph Anton – A Memory”, about the fatwa.
Author of twenty titles, Rushdie received the Booker Prize in 1981 for “Midnight’s Children”, also distinguished with the Booker of Bookers, in 1993, and, in 2008, the Best of the Booker. “O Último Suspiro do Mouro” earned him the Withbread Prize in 1995 and the European Union Prize for Literature in 1996.
Source: Observadora
