Published on : 18/08/2022 – 02:18
The 24-year-old American who repeatedly stabbed writer Salman Rushdie on Friday said he was “surprised” Wednesday that the latter survived, according to the New York Post who contacted him in prison. The young man accused the author of “Satanic Verses” of having “attacked Islam”.
American accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie declared Wednesday August 17 in an interview to be “surprised” that the author of “Satanic Verses” survived the attack, perpetrated Friday during a conference in the State of New York.
“When I heard he survived, I was surprised,” Hadi Matar told the New York Post, which says he 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, calling for the death of the author of the “Satanic Verses”, deemed 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. who writes that Hadi Matar’s lawyers advised him not to talk about this subject. Hadi Matar told the newspaper that he had read “a few pages” of Salman Rushdie’s novel.
Salman Rushdie “hypocrite”
“I don’t like this person. I don’t think he’s a good man,” the suspect told the New York Post about the intellectual. “I don’t like him, I really don’t like him.” “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, in upstate New York, via Twitter.
Originally from the state of New Jersey, he told the American media that he took the bus to the city of Buffalo, then a Lyft – competitor of Uber and taxis – to get to Chautauqua. “I wasn’t doing anything in particular, just wandering around,” he said, “I was just outside all the time.”
Hadi Matar returned “changed” and more religious from a 2018 trip to Lebanon, his family’s country of origin, his mother told the Daily Mail website on Monday.
With AFP