Salman Rushdie, the author whose publication led to death threats from Iranian authority in the 1980s, stabbed Friday as he was about to give a lecture in western New York, is in the hospital, authorities said.
The British-Indian author was about to speak at an event in western New York on Thursday morning, according to law enforcement and witnesses.
Rushdie “suffered an apparent stab wound to the neck, and was transported by helicopter to an area hospital,” state police said in a statement.
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The suspect was taken into custody by a state trooper assigned to the event, police said.
An Associated Press reporter witnessed a man stormed the stage at the Chautauqua Institution and begin attacking Rushdie as he was being introduced. The 75-year-old author was pushed or fell to the floor, and the man was restrained.
Rushdie was quickly surrounded by a small group of people who held up his legs, presumably to send more blood to his chest.
Rushdie in surgery Friday afternoon was taken by helicopter to a hospital; while his condition is unclear, one witness told reporters that her husband saw Rushdie “able to walk with assistance” after the ambush.
Police said that the suspect also attacked an interviewer, who suffered a minor head injury.
Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses has been banned in Iran since 1988, as many Muslims consider it to be blasphemous. A year later, Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.
Iran’s government has long since distanced itself from Khomeini’s decree, but anti-Rushdie sentiment lingered.
A witness, Ward Pautler, told reporters that Rushdie “had just come out and sat down” on stage when he was attacked by an individual who Pautler described as “heavy set and wearing a black headpiece.”
Sitting just three rows away from the small stage next to his brother-in-law, Pautler, 76, said that at first he thought the assailant was “punching Rushdie, but then I realized he was stabbing him.”
In 2012, a semi-official Iranian religious foundation raised the bounty for Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million.
Rushdie dismissed that threat at the time, saying there was “no evidence” of people being interested in the reward. That year, Rushdie published a memoir, “Joseph Anton,” about his experience living under the fatwa.
In 2015, Rushdie addressed the killings of 12 people at the Paris satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, saying the right to free speech is absolute or else it isn’t free.
“Both John Kennedy and Nelson Mandela use the same three-word phrase which in my mind says it all, which is, ‘Freedom is Indivisible,'” he said.
“You can’t slice it up, otherwise it ceases to be freedom. You can dislike Charlie Hebdo. … But the fact that you dislike them has nothing to do with their right to speak.”
(CBS NEWS)
