LONDON – The mother of Hadi al-Matar, the attacker who stabbed British writer Salman Rushdie, told the Daily Mail that her son had returned “changed” and more religious, from a trip he made in 2018 to Lebanon, his family’s home, while Western speculation indicated possible links between him and Hezbollah. The Lebanese (Shiite) or the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old Lebanese-American who was charged with “attempted murder and assault” for stabbing the author of “The Satanic Verses” in eastern New York on Friday, lives with his mother in Fairview (New Jersey) across the Hudson River from Manhattan.
Silvana Ferdous, 46, who has lived in the United States for 26 years, told the website that her son traveled to Lebanon in 2018 to visit his father, knowing that the Shiite parents have been divorced since 2004.
“I was expecting him to come back excited, finish his studies, graduate and get a job, but instead, he locked himself in his underground room. He changed a lot, and he didn’t say anything to me or his two sisters for months.”
She continued, “He quarreled with me on one occasion and he asked me why I encouraged him to study instead of focusing on religion,” expressing regret for what “Mr. Rushdie”, whom she knew nothing regarding before this attack, had been subjected to. Ferdous asserted that she is not interested in politics and denied knowing anyone in Iran and said her son was “responsible for his actions”.
The FBI searched the attacker’s residence and seized knives, a computer and books, she said, while those close to Salman Rushdie, 75, who was stabbed in the neck and stomach dozens of times, reported that his health was improving.
After three days of silence, Iran “firmly” denied Monday that the Islamic Republic had anything to do with the attempted assassination of the British writer, whom it blamed 33 years following a fatwa shed his blood for his book “The Satanic Verses”.
Last Friday, following the stabbing incident at Hadi Al-Matar’s residence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation found a driver’s license issued by the New Jersey authorities, but it appears that he forged it and turned it into the name “Hassan Mughniyeh” following the prominent military commander in Hezbollah Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in a car bombing in Damascus in February 2008.
The American network NBC News also reported that it met an account of the attacker, Salman Rushdie, on Facebook, and the main profile picture on his page was a picture of Khomeini, and concluded that he is a supporter of Hezbollah and Iran.
Western intelligence officials also revealed that Hadi al-Matar was in direct contact with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, while this information remains subject to his evidence, pending what the investigations will reveal.
But linking this information with Hadi Matar’s mother’s statements regarding his return from Lebanon as “more religious” raises questions regarding his relationship with the pro-Iranian Shiite Lebanese Hezbollah.
Rushdie had been threatened with death since the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa to shed his blood in 1989 following the publication of his novel, accusing the Indian-born British writer of “enmity once morest Islam, the Prophet and the Qur’an.”
Born in 1947 in India to a non-religious Muslim family, Rushdie sparked outrage in some Muslim countries following the 1988 publication of “The Satanic Verses”, a novel considered blasphemous by hardliners.
