Aug 13 (Reuters) – Acclaimed author Salman Rushdie remained in hospital with serious injuries on Saturday, a day after he was repeatedly stabbed at a public appearance in New York state, as police tried to determine a motive of an attack that drew international condemnation.
The accused assailant, Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey, pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault in a court appearance on Saturday, his court-appointed attorney told Reuters. Nathaniel Barone.
Rushdie, 75, was scheduled to deliver a lecture on artistic freedom at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York when police say Matar rushed the stage and stabbed the native-born writer India, who has been living with a bounty on his head since his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses” prompted Iran to urge Muslims to kill him.
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After hours of surgery, Rushdie was on a ventilator and unable to speak until Friday evening, according to his agent, Andrew Wylie. The novelist likely lost an eye and had nerve damage to his arm and injuries to his liver, Wylie said in an email.
Wylie did not respond to messages Saturday seeking updates on Rushdie’s condition, although the New York Times reported that Rushdie had begun to speak, citing Wylie.
The stabbing was condemned by writers and politicians around the world as an attack on freedom of expression. In a statement Saturday, President Joe Biden praised the “universal ideals” embodied by Rushdie and his work.
“Truth. Courage. Resilience. The ability to share ideas without fear,” Biden said. “These are the building blocks of any free and open society.”
Neither local nor federal authorities offered any additional details about the investigation Saturday. Police said Friday they had not established a motive for the attack.
An initial law enforcement review of Matar’s social media accounts showed he was sympathetic to Shiite extremism and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), although they had not found definitive links, according to NBC New York.
The IRGC is a powerful faction that controls a business empire as well as elite military and intelligence forces that Washington accuses of waging a global extremist campaign.
When asked to comment on the case, Matar’s attorney, Barone, said, “We’re kind of in the early stages, and frankly, in cases like this, I think the most important thing to remember is that people have of keeping an open mind. looking at everything. They can’t just assume something happened because they think something happened.”
A preliminary hearing on the case is scheduled for Friday, he said.
Matar was born in California and recently moved to New Jersey, the NBC New York report said, adding that he had a fake driver’s license. He was arrested at the scene by a state trooper after being wrestled to the ground by members of the public.
Author Salman Rushdie is carried into a helicopter after being stabbed on stage before his scheduled speech at the Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, New York, USA, on August 12, 2022, in this screenshot taken from ‘a social media video. TWITTER @HoratioGates3 /via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT.
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Witnesses said he did not speak as he attacked the perpetrator. Rushdie was stabbed 10 times, prosecutors said during Matar’s arraignment, according to the Times.
The assault was premeditated; Prosecutors told the court that Matar traveled by bus to the Chautauqua Institution, an educational retreat about 12 miles (19 km) from the shores of Lake Erie, and bought a pass that admitted him to Rushdie’s talk, the Times reported. Attendees said there were no obvious security checks.
The county district attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment Saturday.
FBI investigators went to Matar’s last known address, in Fairview, a Bergen County neighborhood across the Hudson River from Manhattan, on Friday evening, NBC New York reported.
On Saturday, there was no visible police presence at the house, a two-story brick-and-mortar house in a mostly Spanish-speaking neighborhood. A woman who entered the house declined to speak to reporters gathered outside.
BOUNTY IN CAP
Rushdie, who was born into a Kashmiri Muslim family in Bombay, now Bombay, before moving to Britain, has long faced death threats over “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims consider passages you blaspheme The book was banned in many countries with large Muslim populations.
In 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran’s supreme leader, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims to kill the author and anyone involved in the book’s publication for blasphemy. Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of the novel, was stabbed to death in 1991 in a case that remains unsolved.
There has been no official reaction from the government in Iran to the attack on Rushdie, but several hard-line Iranian newspapers praised his attacker. Read more
Iranian organizations, some linked to the government, have collected a reward worth millions of dollars for Rushdie’s murder. Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said as recently as 2019 that the fatwa was “irrevocable”.
Ali Tehfe, mayor of Yaroun in southern Lebanon, said Matar was the son of a man from the town. The suspect’s parents immigrated to the United States and he was born and raised there, the mayor added.
Asked if Matar or his parents were affiliated with or supported the Iran-backed Hezbollah armed group in Lebanon, Tehfe said he had “no information” about their political views.
A Hezbollah official told Reuters on Saturday that the group had no additional information about the attack on Rushdie. Read more
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Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Additional reporting by Randi Love in Fairview, New Jersey, Rami Ayyub and Ted Hesson in Washington and Timour Azhari in Beirut; Written by Nathan Layne and Joseph Axe; Editing by Alexander Smith and Daniel Wallis
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