RNothing filtered Saturday morning on the evolution of the state of health of the famous British naturalized American writer, 75, treated in emergency and under respiratory assistance in a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania, on the edge of the lake of the same name which separates the United States from Canada.
The attack sent shock waves around the world, with the White House condemning “an appalling act of violence”. “Nothing justifies a fatwa, a death sentence”was indignant about Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical newspaper decimated by an Islamist attack in 2015.
The attacker, immediately arrested and taken into custody, is called Hadi Matar, is 24 years old and lives in the state of New Jersey, according to the police. According to Ali Qassem Tahfa, the chief of Yaroun village in southern Lebanon, Hadi Matar “is of Lebanese descent”. “He was born and raised in the United States. His mother and father are from Yaroun”Tahfa told AFP.
The Iranian Fatwa at the origin of the crime?
In Iran, on Saturday, the main ultra-conservative daily Kayhan congratulated the aggressor. “Bravo to this brave and duty-conscious man who attacked the apostate and vicious Salman Rushdie”writes the newspaper. “Let us kiss the hand of him who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife”.
At Tehran’s book market, everyone knows about the attack, but only those who support it speak out: “I was very happy to hear the news. Whoever is the author (of the attack), I kiss his hand (…) May God curse Salman Rushdie”assures Mehrab Bigdeli, who presents himself as a Shiite cleric.
The attack took place on Friday around 11:00 a.m. (3:00 p.m. GMT) on the stage of the amphitheater of the Chautauqua cultural center, when a man “rushed to the stage” and has “stabbed” Rushdie multiple times “in the neck” “in the abdomen”according to the New York State Police.
“The news is not good”Rushdie’s agent Andrew Wylie told The New York Times on Friday night after he was stabbed in the neck and abdomen during a literary conference in the nearby town of Chautauqua, Utah. New York.
“Salman will probably lose an eye; the nerves in his arm were severed and he was stabbed in the liver.”had detailed Wylie, specifying that his client had been placed on an artificial respirator.
The host of the conference where Mr. Rushdie was to speak, Ralph Henry Reese, 73, was himself “slightly injured in the face” but got out of the hospital. Carl LeVan, professor of political science, was in the room, and told AFP on the phone that a man had thrown himself on the stage where Rushdie was sitting to stab him violently several times, “trying to kill him”.
Salman Rushdie, born in 1947 in India into a family of non-practicing Muslim intellectuals, set part of the Islamic world ablaze with the publication of the “Satanic Verses”, leading Iranian Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa in 1989 calling for his assassination. .
The author of fifteen novels, stories for young people, short stories and essays written in English had therefore been forced to live in hiding and under police protection, going from cache to cache.