Rushdie’s attacker, surprised that the writer has survived

First modification: 08/18/2022 – 11:19

The young American accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie said he was “surprised” that the British writer had survived the attack, according to statements to the New York Post published on Wednesday.

“When I heard that he survived, I was shocked,” Hadi Matar, 24, told the tabloid, noting that he did a video interview with the jailed suspect.

The alleged shooter, who has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder charges, did not say whether he was inspired by the 1989 religious edict, or fatwa, issued by Iran’s former supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which ordered Muslims to kill the writer for what he considered the blasphemous nature of the book “The Satanic Verses”.

“I respect the Ayatollah. I think he’s a great person. That’s all I’ll say about that,” said Matar, who, according to the New York Post, was advised by his lawyer not to talk about it.

Matar told the newspaper that he had “read a couple of pages” of Rushdie’s novel.

“I don’t like the person. I don’t think he’s a very good person,” he said of the author. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it very much.”

“He is someone who attacked Islam, attacked their beliefs, the belief systems,” he continued.

Matar said he was not in contact with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Islamic Republic’s ideological army.

He also said that he had learned that Rushdie was giving a literary lecture at the Chautauqua Institution through a tweet earlier this year.

The young man, a resident of New Jersey, told the newspaper that he had taken a bus to the city of Buffalo, in upstate New York, a day before the attack, and then went to the small town of Chautauqua in a vehicle. Lyft, an app ride service.

“I was out there doing time. I didn’t do anything in particular, I just walked,” he told the newspaper. “I was outside the whole time.”

Last Friday, before Rushdie was to give a talk as part of a series of literary lectures, a man burst onto the stage and stabbed him multiple times in the neck and abdomen.

Rushdie was airlifted to a nearby hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery for life-threatening injuries.

The 75-year-old writer remains in serious condition but had a ventilator removed and has shown signs of improvement.

Matar told the New York Post that he had seen YouTube videos of Rushdie speaking and called the writer “fake”.

On Monday, Matar’s mother, Lebanese Silvana Fardos, a resident of Fairview, New Jersey, described Matar as “a moody introvert” and said he had become increasingly obsessed with Islam after visiting Lebanon to see his estranged father, according to statements to the British newspaper Daily Mail.

Matar is due in court on Friday.