Rushdie taken off ventilator, on 'road to recovery'

ERIE (New York) • Mr Salman Rushdie, the acclaimed author who was hospitalised last Friday with serious injuries after being repeatedly stabbed at a public appearance in New York state, is off a ventilator and his condition is improving, his agent and a son said yesterday.

"He's off the ventilator, so the road to recovery has begun," his agent, Mr Andrew Wylie, wrote in an e-mail to Reuters.

"It will be long; the injuries are severe, but his condition is headed in the right direction."

Mr Rushdie, 75, was set to deliver a lecture on artistic freedom at Chautauqua Institution in western New York when police said a 24-year-old man rushed the stage and stabbed the Indian-born writer, who has lived with a bounty on his head since his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, prompted Iran to urge Muslims to kill him.

The suspect, Hadi Matar from Fairview, New Jersey, pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and assault at a court appearance on Saturday, his court-appointed lawyer Nathaniel Barone told Reuters.

Prosecutors said that the attack on the author was premeditated and targeted. Matar was held without bail, with his next court appearance scheduled for Friday.

Following hours of surgery, Mr Rushdie had been put on a ventilator and was unable to speak as at Friday evening, Mr Wylie had said in a prior update on the novelist's condition, adding that he was likely to lose an eye and had nerve damage in his arm and wounds to his liver.

One of Mr Rushdie's sons said his father was able to say a few words after getting off the ventilator. "Though his life-changing injuries are severe, his usual feisty and defiant sense of humour remains intact," Mr Zafar Rushdie wrote on Twitter.

"We are extremely relieved that yesterday he was taken off the ventilator and additional oxygen."

The son offered his thanks to audience members who "bravely leapt to his (father's) defence" and for the "outpouring of love and support from around the world".

The stabbing was condemned by writers and politicians around the world as an assault on freedom of expression.

In a statement on Saturday, US President Joe Biden commended the "universal ideals" of truth, courage and resilience embodied in Mr Rushdie and his work. "These are the building blocks of any free and open society," Mr Biden said.

Neither the local nor federal authorities offered any additional details on the investigation last Saturday. Police said on 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 Shi'ite extremism and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, although no definitive links had been found, according to NBC New York.

The novelist had been living under an effective death sentence since 1989, when Iran's then supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini issued a religious decree, or fatwa, ordering Muslims to kill the writer.

In an interview with Germany's Stern magazine released on Saturday, Mr Rushdie spoke of how, after so many years of living with death threats, his life was "getting back to normal."

"For whatever it was, eight or nine years, it was quite serious," he told a Stern correspondent in New York. "But ever since I've been living in America, since the year 2000, really, there hasn't been a problem in all that time."

Mr Rushdie moved to New York in the early 2000s.

Meanwhile, Scottish police said yesterday they were investigating an apparent "online threat" made against Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling in response to her tweet supporting Mr Rushdie.

The 57-year-old writer tweeted last Friday that she was "feeling very sick right now" as news broke of the attack on Mr Rushdie.

In response, a user tweeted "don't worry, you are next".

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, NYTIMES