Salman Rushdie attack suspect 'surprised' perpetrator survived

“I have esteem for the Ayatollah. I think he's a remarkable person. That's all I would say about it, “he assured the New York tabloid, which writes that Mr. Matar's lawyers advised him not to talk about this subject.

< p>Hadi Matar told the newspaper that he had read “a few pages” of Salman Rushdie's novel.

The 75-year-old British author, stabbed a dozen times and evacuated by helicopter to a hospital, was briefly placed on a ventilator before his condition improved. “The road to recovery has begun,” his agent said on Sunday.

“Hypocritical” Rushdie

“I don’t like this person. I don't think he's a good man,” the suspect told the New York Post about the intellectual. “I don't like it, I really don't like it.”

“He is someone who attacked Islam,” he added. Watching videos of the author on YouTube, he found him “hypocritical”, he continued. 

He assured not to be in contact with the Revolutionary Guards Iranians and learning about Mr. Rushdie's attendance at a cultural center conference in Chautauqua, upstate New York, via Twitter.

A native of New Jersey, he told the American media that he took the bus to the city of Buffalo, then a Lyft – a competitor of Uber and taxis – to get to Chautauqua.

“I was not doing nothing in particular, I was just walking around,” he detailed, “I was just outside the whole time.”

As Salman Rushdie took the stage in an amphitheater, a man s rushed to the stage before stabbing him several times, notably in the neck and abdomen.

Hadi Matar had returned “changed” and more religious from a 2018 trip to Lebanon, a country origin of his family, his mother told the website on Monday. from the Daily Mail.