MAYVILLE, N.Y. –
The man accused of carrying out a knife attack on The Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie has pleaded not guilty in a New York court to charges of attempted murder and assault.
A lawyer for Hadi Matar, 24, spoke on his behalf during an arraignment hearing. Matar appeared in court wearing a black and white jumpsuit and a white face mask. His hands were cuffed in front.
Matar is accused of attacking Rushdie on Friday while the author was being introduced to a lecture at the Chautauqua Institute.
Rushdie was seriously injured in the attack and remains in hospital.
THIS IS UPDATED NEWS. Earlier AP story follows below.
MAYVALL, N.Y. — Salman Rushdie remained hospitalized Saturday after suffering serious injuries in a knife attack that was met with shock and outrage from much of the world, along with tributes and praise for the award-winning author who for more than 30 years is facing death threats for his novel The Satanic Verses.
Rushdie, 75, has a damaged liver, severed nerves in his arm and eye and is on a ventilator and unable to speak, his agent Andrew Wylie said Friday night. Rushdie would probably lose his injured eye.
Rushdie’s alleged attacker, Hadi Matar, was scheduled to appear in court on Saturday to face charges of attempted murder and assault, authorities said. A message was left with his attorney seeking comment.
Authors, activists and government officials condemned the attack and cited Rushdie’s courage for his longstanding advocacy of free speech despite risks to his own safety. Another writer and longtime friend of Rushdie’s, Ian McEwan, called him “an inspiring advocate for persecuted writers and journalists around the world,” and actor and writer Cal Penn cited him as a role model “for a whole generation of artists, especially many of us in the South Asian diaspora to which he showed incredible warmth.”
Mattar, 24, was arrested after the attack at the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit education and recreation center where Rushdie was scheduled to speak.
Authorities said Matar is from Fairview, New Jersey. He was born in the United States to Lebanese parents who immigrated from Yaroun, a border village in southern Lebanon, the village’s mayor, Ali Tehfe, told The Associated Press. Flags of the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah and portraits of leader Hassan Nasrallah, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his late predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and slain Iranian general Qassem Soleimani can be seen around the village. The village also boasts a small Christian population.
Rushdie, a native of India who has since lived in Britain and the US, is known for his surreal and satirical prose style, beginning with his 1981 Booker Prize-winning novel Midnight’s Children, in which he sharply criticized the India of the day Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
The Satanic Verses drew death threats after its publication in 1988, with many Muslims considering a dream sequence based on the life of the Prophet Muhammad to be blasphemous, among other objections. Rushdie’s book had already been banned and burned in India, Pakistan and elsewhere before Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a 1989 fatwa, or decree, calling for Rushdie’s death.
Khomeini died the same year he issued the fatwa, which remains in effect. Iran’s current supreme leader, Khamenei, has never issued his own fatwa to withdraw the edict, although Iran has not focused on the author in recent years.
Investigators are working to determine whether the attacker, born a decade after The Satanic Verses was published, acted alone.
Journalists present in Yarun, the village where the suspect’s parents emigrated from, were asked to leave on Saturday. Hezbollah spokesmen did not respond to AP inquiries about Matar and the attack on Rushdie.
Iran’s theocratic government and its state media gave no justification for the attack. In Tehran, some Iranians interviewed by the AP praised the attack on an author they say tarnished the Islamic faith, while others worried it would further isolate their country.
An AP reporter witnessed the attacker confront Rushdie on stage and stab or punch him 10 to 15 times as the author was introduced. Dr. Martin Haskell, a doctor who was among those who rushed to help, described Rushdie’s wounds as “serious but recoverable.”
Event moderator Henry Rees, 73, co-founder of an organization that offers residencies to writers facing persecution, was also attacked. Reese suffered a facial injury and was treated and released from a hospital, police said. He and Rushdie planned to discuss the United States as a haven for writers and other artists in exile.
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 center questioned why there wasn’t tighter security for the event, given the threats against Rushdie and the bounty on his head, offering more than $3 million for anyone who kills him.
Matar, like other visitors, was given a pass to enter the Chautauqua Institution’s 750-acre grounds, said Michael Hill, the institution’s president.
Rabbi Charles Savener was among about 2,500 people in the audience for Rushdie’s appearance.
The attacker ran onto the platform “and started punching Mr. Rushdie. The first thing you say to yourself is, ‘What’s going on?’ And then in a few seconds it became very clear that he had been beaten,” Savener said. He said the attack lasted about 20 seconds.
Another onlooker, Kathleen James, said the attacker was dressed in black, wearing a black mask.
Amidst sighs, the spectators were ushered out of the outer amphitheater.
The stabbing reverberated from the quiet town of Chautauqua to the United Nations, which issued a statement expressing the dismay of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and stressing that free expression and opinion should not be met with violence.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday’s attack, which was featured on Iranian state television’s evening news bulletin. From the White House, national security adviser Jake Sullivan called the attack “reprehensible” and said the Biden administration wished Rushdie a speedy recovery.
After the publication of The Satanic Verses, often violent protests erupted in 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.”
At least 45 people were killed in riots over the book, including 12 in Rushdie’s hometown of Mumbai. In 1991, a Japanese translator of the book was stabbed to death, and an Italian translator survived a knife attack. In 1993, the book’s Norwegian publisher was shot three times and survived.
The death threats and the reward prompted Rushdie to go into hiding under a British government protection program that included a 24-hour armed guard. Rushdie has emerged after nine years in seclusion and has cautiously resumed more public appearances, maintaining his outspoken criticism of religious extremism in general.
In 2012, Rushdie published a memoir, Joseph Anton, about the fatwa. The title comes from the pseudonym Rushdie used while in hiding. He said during a conversation in New York the same year the memoir came out that terrorism is really the art of fear.
“The only way to defeat it is to decide not to be afraid,” he said.
The Chautauqua Institution, about 55 miles southwest of Buffalo in a rural corner of New York, has served for more than a century as a place of reflection and spiritual guidance. Visitors do not pass through metal detectors or undergo bag checks. Most people leave the doors of their century-old houses unlocked at night.
The center is known for its summer lecture series, where Rushdie has spoken before.
At an evening vigil, several hundred residents and visitors gathered for prayer, music and a long moment of silence.
“Hate can’t win,” shouted one man.
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Italie reported from New York. Associated Press reporter Karim Chehayeb contributed to this report from Beirut.
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