Salman Rushdie remained hospitalized Saturday after suffering serious injuries in a stabbing attack.
Rushdie, 75, suffered a damaged liver, severed nerves in an arm and an eye, and was on a ventilator and unable to speak, his agent Andrew Wylie said Friday evening. Rushdie was likely to lose the injured eye.
Matar, 24, was arrested after the attack at the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit education and retreat centre where Rushdie was scheduled to speak.tap here to see other videos from our teamAuthorities said Matar is from Fairview, New Jersey. He was born in the United States to Lebanese parents who emigrated from Yaroun, a border village in southern Lebanon, the mayor of the village, Ali Tehfe, told The Associated Press.
Investigators were working to determine whether the assailant, born a decade after “The Satanic Verses” was published, acted alone. A state trooper and a county sheriff’s deputy were assigned to Rushdie’s lecture, and state police said the trooper made the arrest. But after the attack, some longtime visitors to the centre questioned why there wasn’t tighter security for the event, given the threats against Rushdie and a bounty on his head offering more than $3 million to anyone who killed him.
The assailant ran onto the platform “and started pounding on Mr. Rushdie. At first you’re like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then it became abundantly clear in a few seconds that he was being beaten,” Savenor said. He said the attack lasted about 20 seconds.Amid gasps, spectators were ushered out of the outdoor amphitheatre.
After the publication of “The Satanic Verses,” often-violent protests erupted across the Muslim world against Rushdie, who was born in India to a Muslim family and has long identified as a non-believer, once calling himself “a hard-line atheist.”
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