Indian writer Salman Rushdie may lose an eye, had his arm nerves cut and was stabbed in the liver. He is hooked up to a respirator and unable to speak. Last Friday (13), Rushdie was stabbed in the neck while on stage at a lecture in the US state of New York. He was transported by helicopter to a hospital.
The suspect in the attack on the writer has been identified as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from Fairview, New Jersey, who bought a ticket to the event Rushdie was to perform at, police said.
Rushdie, who was born into an Indian Muslim family, faced death threats for his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, released in 1988. The novel was banned in several countries with large Muslim populations. In 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran’s supreme leader, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, urging Muslims to kill the novelist for blasphemy. Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in 2017 that the fatwa was still valid.
*With information from RTP and Reuters agencies. Reproduction of this content is prohibited.
