Salman Rushdie, the creator who has lived beneath a demise menace from Iran for a number of a long time, was stabbed on stage throughout a literary occasion within the US on Friday morning.
Police mentioned Rushdie suffered a stab wound to the neck and was flown to hospital by helicopter. The Booker Prize-winning creator was nonetheless in surgical procedure on Friday afternoon, police mentioned.
“The information shouldn’t be good. Salman will seemingly lose one eye; the nerves in his arm have been severed; and his liver was stabbed and broken,” Rushdie’s agent Andrew Wylie mentioned in a press release to Reuters on Friday night. Rushdie, 75, was nonetheless on a ventilator, he mentioned.
Police recognized the suspect within the assault as Hadi Matar, 24, from Fairview, New Jersey. New York state police main Eugene Staniszewski mentioned there was no indication but on a attainable motive for the assault.
Rushdie was scheduled to talk on the Chautauqua Establishment, a few 90-minute drive south-west of town of Buffalo in western New York state, on Friday.
“At about 11am, a male suspect ran up on to the stage and attacked Rushdie and an interviewer,” New York state police mentioned in a press release.
The suspect, who police mentioned had a go to attend the occasion, was taken into custody by a state trooper who was assigned to Rushdie’s lecture. Police mentioned the FBI have been concerned within the investigation.
The Chautauqua Establishment mentioned Rushdie was on the occasion for a dialogue concerning the US “as asylum for writers and different artists in exile and as a house for freedom of inventive expression”. He was joined on stage by Henry Reese, co-founder of a Pittsburgh-based group that homes writers residing in exile. Reese suffered a minor head harm, based on police.
Rushdie’s e-book The Satanic Verses, first revealed in 1988, generated controversy for the way it depicted the Islamic prophet Mohammed. The e-book was banned in Iran and, in 1989, the supreme chief Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie.
Following the demise menace, Rushdie went into hiding. He lived with armed guards and adopted the alias Joseph Anton.
Twitter briefly banned Iran’s present supreme chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2019 for tweeting that Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa in opposition to Rushdie was “strong and irrevocable”.
The venue at which Rushdie was attacked opened in 1874 as a venue to show Methodist Sunday faculty lecturers, earlier than turning into the centre of a wider instructional motion.
It’s recognized for its summer time programme, which hosts well-known authors, musicians and non secular leaders, and for bringing collectively quite a lot of non secular faiths. A Chautauqua consultant couldn’t be reached for touch upon Friday.
“It occurred at a spot that could be very acquainted to me,” mentioned New York governor Kathy Hochul. “This can be a place ideally fitted to him to have the ability to converse and that’s what he was trying to do, simply within the final hour earlier than he was attacked.”
