The American accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie said in an interview Wednesday that he was “shocked” that the gunman satanic verses he survived the attack, which took place at a conference in upstate New York on Friday. “When I found out that he had survived, I was shocked,” Hadi Matar told the new York Mail, which indicates having contacted him in prison.
The suspect, arrested immediately after the attack, pleaded not guilty to attempted murder on Saturday and is due to appear in court again on Friday.
Hadi Matar, 24, did not say whether he was inspired by the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 from Iran, which called for the death of the author of the satanic versesconsidered blasphemous.
“I have esteem for the Ayatollah. I think he is a remarkable person. That’s all I would say about it,” he told the New York tabloid, writing that the suspect’s lawyers advised him not to speak on the subject.
Rushdie, a “hypocrite”
Hadi Matar told the newspaper that he had read “a few pages” of Salman Rushdie’s novel. “I don’t like this person. I don’t think he is a good man,” the suspect told the New York Post about the intellectual. “I don’t like it, I really don’t like it.”
“He is someone who attacked Islam,” he added. Watching videos of the author on YouTube, he found him “hypocritical,” he continued.
He said he was not in contact with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and learned of Salman Rushdie’s presence at a conference at a cultural center in Chautauqua, upstate New York, via Twitter.
Originally from New Jersey, he told US media that he took the bus to the city of Buffalo, then a Lyft (competitor to Uber and taxis) to get to Chautauqua. “He wasn’t doing anything in particular, just hanging around,” he said, “he was just outside all the time.”
Source: BFM TV
