Top writer Salman Rushdie stabbed in the neck and stomach, perpetrator is 24-year-old Hadi Matar from New Jersey | Writer Salman Rushdie stabbed

The attack happened around 11 a.m. local time in Chautauqua, about 470 kilometers from New York City. An AP reporter saw a man storm the stage as Rushdie was introduced. The attack itself lasted about 20 seconds. Images show the author lying on the floor while receiving first aid. Among other things, bystanders hold his legs up in an attempt to send more blood to his chest. The author was then taken to hospital by helicopter.

New York State Police said he was stabbed in the neck. The severity of his injuries is not yet known. A doctor who attended the Chautauqua Institute event has the New York Times told that she was helping Rushdie after the stabbing. According to Rita Landman, Rushdie suffered multiple stab wounds, including one on the right side of his neck. She added that a pool of blood had formed under his body on stage. Rushdie was not being resuscitated at the time and appeared to be alive. “People said, ‘He’s got a heartbeat, he’s got a heartbeat, he’s got a heartbeat,” she says.

Rushdie is getting “the care he needs,” Governor Hochul said. She praises the cop who “saved Rushdie’s life” by jumping in and describes Chautauqua, the town where the attack took place, as “a very quiet rural community” and an “ideal” place for notable figures like Rushdie to talk.

The person Rushdie interviewed, Henry Reese, was also attacked and suffered a minor head injury. The perpetrator has been arrested by the police. His identity is not yet known. The investigation is in full swing. More information is being collected about the perpetrator, Hochul said.

Born in India in 1947 to a Muslim family, Ahmed Salman Rushdie was hated in the world of radical Muslims for his book The Devil’s Verses which Islamists stopped mass demonstrations when it was published in 1988. A year later, the then Shia ruler in Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989), declared Rushdie an outlaw and called for his assassination. The fatwa cost him marriages, friendships and much of his freedom. “I don’t regret anything,” he said.

Rushdie, knighted in 2007, had to go into hiding for ten years before being under constant British police protection. While he was hiding, worldwide protests, book burnings and diplomatic riots broke out. Rushdie, who had gone to study and live in England, was seen as Satan. At least one bomb attempt on his life failed prematurely. Groups of extremists assume that the fatwa still applies, because such appeals from a high-ranking Shia cleric are no longer amended or revoked after the cleric’s death.

The threats don’t come from attic room heroes. Over the years, the price on his head rose to 2 million euros. The incentives to kill him are by no means time-barred. Two years ago, Iranian state media offered an amount of 541,000 euros to anyone who lived up to the word. In the past, translators of The Devil’s Verses attacked. On July 12, 1991, the Japanese translator of the book was found dead outside his office at Tsukuba University, northeast of Tokyo. Hitoshi Igarashi (44) had been stabbed several times, according to the police. Earlier that month – on July 3, 1991 – the Italian translator was also attacked in his flat in Milan. Ettore Capriolo (61) survived.

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In 2012, India’s largest literary festival in Jaipur threatened to get out of hand because Rushdie would address the participants via video link. This was waived to prevent violence. Dozens of Muslim activists tried to break into the festival site.

Also, according to the police, a crowd would gather in a park to march to the festival. The writer previously decided not to attend the meeting because militant Muslims would want to commit an attack on him. Find many radical Muslims The Devil’s Verses an insult to their religion.

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A friend of Rushdie’s, Frances D’Souza, has said that the relationship between Rushdie and those responsible for protecting him was at times tense. “He had to fight for every inch. To go to the cinema, the opera or the theatre. The security officers were usually happier if they could keep him at the hiding place,” D’Souza said earlier.

The curses Rushdie received from Muslim quarters, however, are in stark contrast to the accolades the West waved at him. He has won the Whitbread Prize for Literature (twice), the James Tait Black Prize and the Booker Prize, among others. That makes Rushdie one of the most celebrated writers of Indian descent. Rushdie wrote twelve novels, a collection of short stories and four non-fiction works. He has never regretted his earlier work, he stated in various interviews.

Rushdie was born on June 19, 1947 into a wealthy moderate Muslim family in the city of Mumbai (Bombay), a few months before India’s independence. As a young boy he went to Britain to attend school, first in Rugby and later in Cambridge. There he studied history. In his own words, he fell from his faith when he was fifteen years old. Rushdie’s first act as an infidel was to buy a sandwich made with the ham forbidden by Islam.

Rushdie has called the fatwa “more of a rhetorical cry than an actual threat.”