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Salman Rushdie in surgery; stabbed ahead of speech in New York

New York State Police have identified the suspect in Friday’s stabbing of novelist Salman Rushdie as a New Jersey man who, according to law enforcement sources, allegedly had ‘sympathies toward the Iranian government.’

Rushdie, 75, whose novel ‘The Satanic Verses’ drew death threats from Iran’s leader in the 1980s, remained in surgery Friday evening hours after being stabbed up to 15 times by a man who rushed the stage as the author was about to give a lecture in western New York.

Authorities confirmed that the attacker Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey, was arrested at the scene and was awaiting arraignment. State police Maj. Eugene Staniszewski said the motive for the stabbing was unclear.

But law enforcement sources told The New York Post that an initial investigation suggests Matar is sympathetic to the Iranian regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

Rushdie, who has been the subject of death threats from the Iranian regime since the late 1980s, was attacked as he was being introduced to the stage for the CHQ 2022 event in Chautauqua, near Buffalo, on Friday morning.

Witnesses claim that Rushdie was stabbed 10 to 15 times, as Matar approached him from behind before rushing the stage. He is understood to have gained access to the grounds with a pass, police said.

Matar then managed to walk off the stage after the stabbing, before being restrained, as people rushed to assist Rushdie – who had been seated when he was assaulted. A doctor in the crowd helped administer CPR, before he was airlifted to hospital. He remained in surgery on Friday evening in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Event moderator Henry Reese, 73, a co-founder of an organization that offers residencies to writers facing persecution, was also attacked. Reese suffered a facial injury and was treated and released from a hospital, police said. He and Rushdie were due to discuss the United States as a refuge for writers and other artists in exile.

Rushdie’s novel was viewed as blasphemous by many Muslims in the 1980s, and at least 45 people were killed in riots over the book, leading to it being banned in Iran, where the late leader Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a 1989 fatwa, calling for Rushdie’s death.

The death threats and bounty led Rushdie to go into hiding under a British government protection program, until he emerged after nine years of seclusion and cautiously resumed more public appearances, maintaining his outspoken criticism of religious extremism overall. He has been in the United States since 2000.

The attack occurred at the Chautauqua Institution, which hosts arts programs in a tranquil lakeside community 70 miles south of Buffalo.

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Daily Mail
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