Salman Rushdie’s Attacker is Surprised That He’s Still Alive

Hadi Matar the accused who stabbed famous author Salman Rushdie during a book event in New York said that he’s surprised to know that the author is still alive. 

He spoke to the New York Post from the jail and revealed that he decided to plan an attack on Salman Rusdie when he saw the writer’s tweet last winter about the event. 

Speaking of the author, Matar told the New York Post, “I don’t like the person. I don’t think he’s a very good person.”

“He’s someone who attacked Islam. He attacked their beliefs, the belief systems”, he said 

He also acknowledged former supreme leader of Iran Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as “a great person.’

Hadi Matar however did not  reveal whether he was following a Fatwa issued by the former supreme leader of Iran in 1989  after Salman Rushdie published ‘Satanic Verses.’ He said that he hadn’t had any contact with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. 

Matar had read a few pages of the’ Satanic Verses.’ He was born in America however he holds dual citizenship in America and Lebanon. 

The day prior to the fateful attack he took a bus to Buffalo and then a Lyft to a Chautauqua, which was around 64 kilometres away. 

He bought a pass to the Chautauqua Institution grounds and then slept out in the grass.

On 12 August after the attack Salman Rushdie suffered from a damaged liver and severed nerves in an eye and an arm. 

His mother told reporters that he became a changed person after he went to visit his estranged father in Lebanon in 2018. He was moody and isolated himself from the family.