It was 24-year-old Hadi Matar who stormed the stage on Thursday and stabbed award-winning author Salman Rushdie during a lecture in New York state.
Updated just now
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Salman Rushdie was stabbed in the upper body and neck when he was going to lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York on Thursday.
On the night of Friday, the British author will undergo surgery in hospital. According to Rushdie’s agent, he will probably lose an eye. In addition, the attack has damaged his liver and nerves in his arm.
The man who jumped onto the stage and attacked Rushdie was a 24-year-old man from the neighboring state of New Jersey. He was quickly overpowered and arrested by the police on the spot.
–– We have worked to identify the suspect. We have no indication of the motive behind the actions so far, says Major Eugene Staiszewski of the local police in the latest update on the attack just before midnight Norwegian time.
For several decades, the author has lived with a so-called fatwa judgment against him, when Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah in 1989 demanded his execution for the controversial book Satanic Verses.
–It was in the same update on Thursday evening that the perpetrator was named.
This is what we know about Hadi Matar so far:
- 24-year-old Matar had bought a ticket to Rushdie’s lecture, which was supposed to be about, among other things, artistic freedom.
- The police go so far as to assume that he has acted alone, without having collaborated with others, reports Reuters.
- The perpetrator lives in the neighborhood of Fairview in New Jersey. The police have so far not been able to confirm Matar’s nationality, and his citizenship is still unclear.
- A police official told NBC News associated with the investigation that in the initial investigation Matar appears to have expressed sympathy with Shia extremism and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
- With him he had an object he used to stab Rushdie. The police have so far not released a description of the weapon.
- According to the police, Matar is not known to have made any threats against the event.
- The motive is not known. The local sheriff’s office is now working with the FBI to investigate and get to the bottom of this.
- The police have asked for permission to search a bag and electronic devices found at the scene, which probably belong to the perpetrator. The bag has already been examined by the bomb squad on site, reports The New York Times.
Storm the scene
– There were around five men who pulled him away and he continued the stabbing. He was just furious, furious, according to Linda Abrams New York Times. She was in the audience, in the front row.
Several eyewitnesses at the scene have told the press about how Matar ran onto the stage. He attacked both the author and the speaker at the lecture, who was on stage with Rushdie.
– A man jumped onto the stage, I have no idea from where. It looked like he started punching, with several blows to his chest and throat, says audience member Bradley Fisher in a testimony to both Reuters and the BBC.
– People screamed and shouted and gasped, he adds.
The chairman suffered minor head injuries, but was quickly discharged from hospital.
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Objective of fatwa
Salman Rushdie is best known for the controversies that arose when he published the book Satanic Verses in 1988. Among other things, the book came with slanted views on Islam and the prophet Muhammad, which created strong reactions in Islamic circles.
The year after publication, the government of Iran issued a fatwa, a kind of public religious ruling, demanding that the author be executed because they believed the book was blasphemous.
In 2019, it was 30 years since the fatwa was given. It has never been retracted, although the Iranian government has stated that they no longer wish to harm the author.
The police have so far not commented on whether the fatwa could be the background for Matar’s attack on the author, as they have not yet found indications of a motive.
William Nygaard, who previously published several of Rushdie’s books as a publishing manager in Aschehoug, has also been subjected to violent attack as a result of the Fatwa.
I 1993 He was shot outside his home. The matter has never been resolved, but is linked to the publication. The fatwa also applied to those who contributed to getting the book published.
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