Salman Rushdie continues his improvement and is already collaborating with researchers

Writer Salman Rushdie continues to improve and a few days later the attack against him he started talking to the investigators to help them rebuild the attack and try to find the reason.

From his hospital bed in Erie, Pennsylvania, the 75-year-old author began answering investigators’ questions in an “articulate” way.

It is not clear what information the writer was able to provide, that on August 12, just as he was about to speak on the stage of the Chautauqua Institute, he was stabbed at least ten times by a 24-year-old man from New Jersey, of Lebanese origin, who suffered severe injuries to his neck, arm, liver, leg and right eye

The attacker, who has no criminal record, pleaded not guilty and chose not to answer the questions of the investigators, despite the lawyer having entrusted him ex officio, Nathaniel Baronedescribed it as “very collaborative”

Investigators continue to dig into his life and examine computers, phones and social media accounts, but little has been learned so far.

Meanwhile, for the first time since the aggression, the Iranian government has expressed itself, justifying the violence of Hadhi Matar (24), but he also distanced himself from what happened.

The US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinkenhowever, he explicitly accused Tehran of being responsible, at least from a moral point of view, for the attempt on the life of the author of “the satanic verses“.

For his part, US President Joe Biden has avoided pointing to Iran in his message of solidarity to the writer, but for Blinken there is no doubt that the attack of the 24-year-old was instigated by Tehran.

The response from the Tehran government was swift. He denied any involvement, but blamed Rushdie himself to “insult Islam for years”.

“We cannot condemn anyone but himself and his followers,” said the spokesman for the foreign ministry. Nasser Kanani.

Words that the US State Department called “disgusting”.

From a young extrovert to a radicalized militant in 28 days

Hadhi Matar, The 24-year-old man accused of carrying out the brutal attack on Salman Rushdie last Friday was, according to his mother, a “loving and outgoing” son, until the trip he made in 2018 to visit his father in Lebanon.

After spending 28 days in the countryside, the gregarious boy he had met has returned to a completely different person: quiet and introverted, refusing contact with family members, he moved to the basement of the woman’s house in New Jersey. He even cooked her meals and started living at night to sleep during the day.

“I was hoping that he would come back motivated to finish his studies, that he would take a degree and a job. But he came back and locked himself in the cellar. He had changed a lot, he did not speak to me or to his sisters for months,” said To’s mother. kill, Silvana Fardosto the Daily Mail.

“I couldn’t tell you much about his life after, because he’s been keeping me away from 2018. If I came, he would say hello to me at times, at other times he would ignore me and leave,” he added.

Fardos also claimed that the young man began to be more religious and criticized him for not introducing him to Islam at an early age.

“I have not pushed any of my children to religion, nor have I forced my son to do anything. I don’t know anyone in Iran, my whole family is here,” explained the woman, who repudiated her son’s actions, saying that He is “responsible for his actions”.

Of his travels before the attack on Rushdie, it is known only that he arrived from Buffalo on a bus and then used a rideshare application to get to Chautauqua, the day before the event with the writer.

It is not known where he spent the night and, above all, how he managed to enter a literary festival armed with a knife where the guest of honor was a man who had been threatened with death for 30 years.

At the time of his arrest, he had two prepaid credit cards, some cash and a false driver’s license in the name of a Hezbollah “martyr”.

This object and some photos of the Iranian general Qassem Solemani and the Ayatollah Khomeini – the author of the fatwa against Rushdie in 1989 – in his social reports suggests that Matar is close to Shiite extremism and the causes of the Iranian Pasdaran.

With information from agencies

DB