Rushdie remained hospitalized on Sunday with serious injuries, but his author Aatish Taseer tweeted on Sunday that he was “off the ventilator and talking (and joking)”.
Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, confirmed this information without offering further details.
Author Salman Rushdie talks about the beginning of his writing career during the Mississippi Book Festival in 2018. (AP)
Earlier in the day, the man accused of attacking him Friday at the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit educational and retreat center, pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault in what a prosecutor called it a “pre-planned” crime.
An attorney for Hadi Matar entered the plea on his behalf during an appearance in Western New York. The suspect appeared in court wearing a black and white jumpsuit and a white mask, with his hands handcuffed in front of him.
A judge ordered him held without bail after District Attorney Jason Schmidt told him that Matar took steps to intentionally put himself in a position to harm Rushdie by getting an early pass to the event where the author was speaking and arrived a day early with a fake ID.
People gather at an evening vigil to pray and observe a moment of silence after an attack on author Salman Rushdie. (AP Photo/Joshua Goodman) (AP)
“This was a targeted, unprovoked and pre-planned attack on Mr Rushdie,” Schmidt said.
Public defender Nathaniel Barone complained that authorities had taken too long to bring Matar before a judge while leaving him “glued to a bench in the state police barracks.”
“He has that constitutional right of presumption of innocence,” Barone added.
Matar, 24, is accused of attacking Rushdie on Friday when the author was speaking at a conference at the Chautauqua Institute, a non-profit retreat and education center.
Hadi Matar, 24, listens as he is arraigned at the Chautauqua County Courthouse. (AP)
Rushdie, 75, suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and eye, and was on a ventilator and unable to speak, his agent Andrew Wylie said Friday evening. It is likely that Rushdie lost the injured eye.
The attack was met with shock and outrage from much of the world, along with tributes and praise for the award-winning author who has faced death threats over The Satanic Verses for more than 30 years.
Authors, activists, and government officials cited Rushdie’s courage and longtime advocacy of free speech despite risks to his own safety. Writer and long-time friend Ian McEwan said Rushdie was “an inspiring advocate for persecuted writers and journalists around the world”, and actor and author Kal Penn cited him as a role model “for all a generation of artists, especially for many of us in South Asia. diaspora towards whom he has shown incredible warmth.”
President Joe Biden said in a statement Saturday that he and first lady Jill Biden were “shocked and saddened” by the attack.
“Salman Rushdie, with his vision of humanity, with his unparalleled sense of history, with his refusal to be intimidated or silenced, represents essential and universal ideals,” the statement said.
“The truth. courage Resilience. The ability to share ideas without fear. These are the basic components of any free and open society.”
This still image from the video shows Hadi Matar, 24, who left, being escorted off the stage as people tend to author Salman Rushdie. (AP)
Rushdie, a native of India who has since lived in Britain and the United States, is known for his surreal and satirical prose style, beginning with his 1981 Booker Prize-winning novel Midnight’s Children, in the which harshly criticized the then Prime Minister of India, Indira. Gandhi.
The Satanic Verses drew death threats after its publication in 1988, and many Muslims considered a dream sequence based on the life of the Prophet Muhammad to be blasphemous, among other objections. Rushdie’s book had already been banned and burned in India, Pakistan and elsewhere before Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death in 1989.
Author Salman Rushdie is treated after being attacked during a conference. (AP)
Khomeini died that same year, but the fatwa remains in effect. Iran’s current supreme leader, Khamenei, never issued a fatwa of his own to withdraw the edict, although Iran in recent years has not focused on the writer.
Investigators were working to determine whether the attacker, born a decade after The Satanic Verses was published, acted alone.
District Attorney Schmidt alluded to the fatwa as a potential reason to argue against bail.
“Even if this court were to set bail at $1 million, we run the risk that the bond could be met,” Schmidt said.
“I don’t care about their resources. We understand that the agenda that was carried out yesterday is something that was adopted and sanctioned by larger groups and organizations far beyond the jurisdictional boundaries of Chautauqua County,” the prosecutor said.
The author Salman Rushdie is transferred on a stretcher to a helicopter to be transported to a hospital. (AP)
Barone, the public defender, said after the hearing that Matar has been open with him and that he will spend the next few weeks trying to get to know his client, including whether he has psychological or addiction issues.
Matar is from Fairview, New Jersey. Rosaria Calabrese, manager of the State of Fitness Boxing Club, a small, tight-knit gym in nearby northern Bergen, said Matar joined on April 11 and participated in about 27 group sessions for beginners looking for improve his fitness before emailing him a few days ago to tell him. he wanted to cancel his membership because he “wouldn’t be back for a while”.
Gym owner Desmond Boyle said he saw “nothing violent” about Matar, describing him as polite and calm, but someone who always seemed “tremendously sad”. He said Matar resisted attempts by him and others to take him in and engage him.
“He had this look every time he came in. He looked like he was having the worst day of his life,” Boyle said.
Flowers bloom outside the Chautauqua Institution reception center in Chautauqua. (AP Photo/Joshua Bessex) (AP)
Matar was born in the United States to parents who immigrated from Yaroun in southern Lebanon, the village’s mayor, Ali Tehfe, told The Associated Press.
Flags of the Iran-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah are visible in the village and portraits of leader Hassan Nasrallah, Khamenei, Khomeini and slain Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
Journalists who visited Yaroun on Saturday were asked to leave. Hezbollah spokesmen did not respond to requests for comment.
Iran’s theocratic government and its state media did not assign a motive for the attack. In Tehran, some Iranians interviewed by the AP praised the attack on a perpetrator they believe tarnished the Islamic faith, while others worried it would further isolate their country.
Hadi Matar, 24, second from right, listens as his public defender Nathaniel Barone addresses the judge. (AP)
An AP reporter witnessed the attacker stab or punch Rushdie about 10 to 15 times. Dr Martin Haskell, a doctor who rushed to help, described Rushdie’s injuries as “serious but recoverable”.
Event moderator Henry Reese, 73, suffered a facial injury and was treated and released from a hospital, police said. He and Rushdie had planned to talk about the United States as a haven for writers and other artists in exile.
A state trooper and a county sheriff’s deputy were assigned to Rushdie’s conference, and state police said the trooper made the arrest. But afterward, some longtime visitors to the center questioned why there wasn’t tighter security given the threats against Rushdie and a more than $3 million bounty on his head.
People gather at a vigil for author Salman Rushdie after the attack. (AP Photo/Joshua Goodman) (AP)
News of the stabbing has sparked renewed interest in The Satanic Verses, which topped the bestseller lists after the fatwa was issued in 1989. As of Saturday afternoon, the novel was at No. 13 on Amazon.com.
The book’s publication in 1988 sparked often violent protests across the Muslim world against Rushdie, who was born into a Muslim family and has long identified as a non-believer, once calling himself a “hard-line atheist “.
At least 45 people were killed in the riots, including 12 in Rushdie’s hometown of Mumbai. In 1991, a Japanese translator of the book was stabbed to death and an Italian translator survived a knife attack. In 1993, the book’s Norwegian editor was shot three times and survived.
Hadi Matar, 24, center, arrives for an arraignment at the Chautauqua County Courthouse. (AP)
The death threats and reward led Rushdie to go into hiding under a British government protection program, which included a 24-hour armed guard. After nine years in seclusion, Rushdie cautiously resumed more public appearances, keeping his criticism open to religious extremism in general.
In 2012 he published a memoir about the fatwa entitled Joseph Anton, the pseudonym Rushdie used while in hiding.
He said during a talk in New York that year that terrorism was really the art of fear: “The only way to defeat it is to decide not to be afraid.”