Salman Rushdie, the author who has lived under a death threat from Iran for several decades, has been stabbed on stage during a literary event in the US.
Police said Rushdie, 75, suffered an apparent stab wound to the neck and was taken by helicopter to a hospital. “His condition is not yet known,” they said.
Rushdie’s agent Andrew Wylie said the author was alive and in surgery, Reuters reported.
The writer was scheduled to speak at the Chautauqua Institution, about a 90-minute drive south-west of the city of Buffalo in western New York state, on Friday.
“At about 11am, a male suspect ran up on to the stage and attacked Rushdie and an interviewer,” New York state police said in a statement.
The suspect had been taken into custody by a state trooper who was assigned to the event, the police said. No additional information about the attacker was available.
The Chautauqua Institution said Rushdie was at the event for a discussion about the US “as asylum for writers and other artists in exile and as a home for freedom of creative expression”. He was joined on stage by Henry Reese, co-founder of a Pittsburgh-based group that houses writers living in exile, who suffered a minor head injury according to police.
Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses, first published in 1988, generated controversy for how it depicted the Islamic prophet Mohammed. The book was banned in Iran and the supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie in 1989.
Following the death threat, Rushdie went into hiding. He lived with armed guards and adopted the alias Joseph Anton.
Twitter temporarily banned Iran’s current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2019 for tweeting that Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie was “solid and irrevocable”.
The venue at which Rushdie was attacked opened in 1874 as a venue to teach Methodist Sunday school teachers, before becoming the centre of a wider educational movement.
It is known for its summer programme, which hosts well-known authors, musicians and religious leaders, and for bringing together a variety of religious faiths. A Chautauqua representative could not be reached for comment on Friday.
“It happened at a place that is very familiar to me,” said New York governor Kathy Hochul. “This is a place ideally suited for him to be able to speak and that’s what he was attempting to do, just in the last hour before he was attacked.”
The governor, who hails from western New York, said she will provide more information on the identity of the perpetrator and a case will be brought.
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2022-08-12 21:04:39Z
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