The man accused of stabbing author Salman Rushdie on a stage in western New York on Friday is a 24-year-old man from Fairview, New Jersey, according to authorities.
Police identified the suspect as Hadi Matar, 24, in a news release distributed hours after the Indian-born author’s attack.
Rushdie, 75, was about to speak at a literary festival hosted by the Chautauqua Institution late in the morning when Matar allegedly rushed on stage and stabbed him at least once in the neck and the stomach, Maj Eugene Staniszewski of New York state police said.
Spectators and institution staffers rushed Matar and tackled him after the stabbing, Staniszewski added. A state trooper and a local sheriff’s office deputy working security at the talk then moved in and arrested him.
A doctor who was attending Rushdie’s speech treated the wounded author until a helicopter crew could fly him to a hospital, where he underwent surgery.
Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, said on Friday evening that he was put on a ventilator and had suffered significant injuries: “The news is not good. Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.”
The speaker introducing Rushdie, 73-year-old Ralph Henry Reese, was treated and released for what Staniszewski described as a relatively minor facial injury.
Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses – centering on two Indian Muslims living in England – has been banned in Iran since 1988, with many Muslims considering it to be blasphemous.
Staniszewski said police had not determined a motive for Matar’s alleged attack on Rushdie, though agents with the FBI had arrived to assist local and state officials with their investigation into the stabbing that had made international headlines.
The exact charges against Matar, who had bought a ticket to Friday’s talk, would also depend on Rushdie’s condition following the stabbing.
Many have noted that Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for Rushdie’s death in 1989, with a bounty of more than $3m being offered for anyone who killed the author.
The New York Post, citing law enforcement sources, reported that Matar was sympathetic toward the Iranian government. Police have not yet announced a motive.
Iran’s government has long since distanced itself from the Ayatollah’s fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s life. But anti-Rushdie sentiment has persisted.
The Chautauqua Institution’s president, Michael Hill, said his organization had made sure in advance to have law enforcement officers on hand for Rushdie’s talk. He said the stabbing was “unlike anything in [the institution’s] nearly 150-year history”.
“Be assured we will return to our pulpits and our podiums,” Hill said while offering prayers to the families of Rushdie and Reese. “We’ll continue to convene the critical conversations that can help build empathy, obviously which is now more important than ever.”
