A day after the bloody attack on Salman Rushdie in western New York, questions are being asked about how the perpetrator gained untrammeled access to the event with apparently minimal security precautions.
Rushdie, 75, was attacked at 10.47am on Friday, moments after he had sat down on stage in the Chautauqua Institution, a historic community of artists and thinkers about 15 miles south of Lake Erie. The auditorium, which accommodates about 4,000 people, was two-thirds full.
The novelist was stabbed several times including in the neck and abdomen. His agent Andrew Wylie said his liver had been damaged and that he was likely to lose an eye, and he remained hospitalized on Saturday.
People travelled from around the local area to hear the author speak about the importance of America providing asylum for exiled writers. Many expressed trauma at what they witnessed and expressed concern about the level of security.
Paul Susko, a lawyer based in Erie – the town in Pennsylvania where Rushdie is now being treated in a ventilator at UPMC Hamot hospital – told the local news site goerie.com that participants were prevented from bringing in food and drink to the hall but that was all.
“There was screening to prevent attendees from bringing in a cup of coffee,” Susko said. He added that “maybe screening for weapons” with wand or walk-through metal detectors “would have been more helpful”.
Susko, who came to the event with his son, was sitting in the front row on the side of the stage where the suspect, identified as Hadi Matar, 24, from Fairview, New Jersey, rushed at the author. “There was no security stopping us from getting to the stage,” Susko said. “There was zero security visible around the stage at the time of the attack.”
The violent attack was the antithesis of everything that the Chautauqua Institution has stood for since its founding in 1874. Nestled in a tiny town of just 4,000 people on the edge of Lake Chautauqua, a seven-hour drive from New York City, the organization began life as a summer camp for Sunday school teachers and grew into a major hub of cultural exchange and dialogue.
Hours after the attack, the institution’s president, Michael Hill, said the site had seen nothing like it in almost 150 years of existence. Audibly shaken, he said: “We were founded to bring people together in community, to learn and in doing so to create solutions, to develop empathy and to take on intractable problems. Today, we are called to take on fear and the worst of all human traits: hate.”
Hill confirmed that Matar had a ticket for the Rushdie event “the same way any other patron would have”. He stressed that the institution was open to anyone, as part of its mission of inclusivity.
Asked whether there should have been beefed up security with metal detectors present, given the sensitivities around Rushdie, he said: “We are proud of the security we have at Chautauqua.”
Rushdie has been under a fatwa calling for his death since 1989, when the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued it in response to his book The Satanic Verses, which was castigated as blasphemous.
Although the Iranian regime appeared to distance itself from the fatwa, a bounty for carrying it out has been increased in recent years to more than $3m.
Discussions were held before Friday’s talk between state and local police and the institution, and two police officers were assigned – a state trooper and a local deputy. Eugene Staniszewski of the New York state police told a press conference that law enforcement had met with the institution at the start of the season.
“There were some high profile events they had requested some law enforcement presence be there, and luckily they were,” he said.
The governor of New York state, Kathy Hochul, praised the trooper for his actions. “It was a state police officer who stood up and saved his life, protected him as well as the moderator who was attacked,” she said.
Rushdie spent almost a decade in hiding after the issuing of the fatwa. He remained under police protection, moving from safe house to safe house every few days.
After many years he began slowly to re-enter society and has for some time lived in the open in New York City. He has explained his stance on his own security with the comment: “Oh, I have to live my life.”
The writer attended the Chautauqua talk with no security detail of his own. When asked whether the organizers should somehow have made efforts to filter attendees entering the premises, Hill vehemently disagreed.
“Our mission is to build bridges across difference,” he said. “Mr Rushdie is known as one of the most significant champions for freedom of speech. One of the worst things that Chautauqua could do is back away from its mission. I don’t think Mr Rushdie would want that either.”
