Salman Rushdie on ventilator after attack

NEW YORK • Author Salman Rushdie, who spent years in hiding after an Iranian fatwa ordered his killing, was on a ventilator and could lose an eye following a stabbing attack at a literary event in New York state on Friday.

The man suspected of attacking him has been charged with attempted murder and assault, prosecutors said yesterday.

The British author of The Satanic Verses, which sparked fury among some Muslims, had been airlifted to hospital for emergency surgery.

"The news is not good," said his agent Andrew Wylie. "Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged," said Mr Wylie, who added that Mr Rushdie, 75, could not speak.

Dr Carl LeVan, an American University politics professor at the literary event, said the assailant had rushed onto the stage where Mr Rushdie was seated and "stabbed him repeatedly and viciously".

Several people brought the suspect to the ground before a trooper at the event arrested him, and a doctor in the audience administered medical care until emergency first responders arrived.

Police identified the suspected attacker as Hadi Matar, 24, from Fairfield, New Jersey, adding that he stabbed Mr Rushdie in the neck as well as the abdomen.

Preliminary law enforcement review of Matar's social media accounts showed he was sympathetic to Shi'ite extremism and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) causes, NBC New York said yesterday, citing police sources. The IRGC is a powerful faction that controls a business empire as well as elite armed and intelligence forces that the US accuses of carrying out a global extremist campaign.

The NBC report added that he had a fake driver's licence on him.

The attack on Friday took place at the Chautauqua Institution, which hosts arts programmes in a tranquil lakeside community 110km south of Buffalo city.

"What many of us witnessed today was a violent expression of hate that shook us to our core," the Chautauqua Institution said.

Dr LeVan said the suspect "was trying to stab him as many times as possible before he was subdued", adding that he believed the man "was trying to kill" Mr Rushdie.

Mr Rushdie was propelled to fame with his novel Midnight's Children in 1981 which won international praise and Britain's prestigious Booker Prize for its portrayal of post-Independence India.

But his 1988 book, The Satanic Verses, saw Iran's first supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issue a fatwa, or religious decree, ordering his killing. The novel was considered by some Muslims as disrespectful of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.

Mr Rushdie, who was born in India to non-practising Muslims and today identifies as an atheist, was forced to go underground as a bounty was put on his head - which remains today.

He spent nearly a decade in hiding, and began to emerge from his life on the run only in the late 1990s after Iran in 1998 said it would not support his assassination. Now living in New York, he is an advocate of freedom of speech.

"We can think of no comparable incident of a public attack on a literary writer on American soil," said Ms Suzanne Nossel, chief executive of PEN America, which advocates for freedom of expression.

Iranian ultra-conservative newspaper Kayhan yesterday hailed Mr Rushdie's assailant.

"Bravo to this courageous and duty-conscious man who attacked the apostate and depraved Salman Rushdie in New York," wrote the newspaper, whose chief is appointed by current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "Let us kiss the hands of the one who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife."

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS