Salman Rushdie attacker ‘surprised’ the author survived, he says in interview from jail
- Suspect Hadi Matar, who called Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini ‘a great person’, says he decided to go to the writer’s event in New York after seeing a tweet about it
- He also says he has read only a ‘couple pages’ of The Satanic Verses, the novel that prompted the fatwa against Rushdie
The man charged with stabbing Salman Rushdie on a lecture stage in western New York said in an interview that he was surprised to learn the accomplished author had survived the attack.
Speaking to the New York Post from jail, Hadi Matar said he decided to see Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institution after he saw a tweet last winter about the writer’s planned appearance.
“I don’t like the person. I don’t think he’s a very good person,” Matar told the newspaper. “He’s someone who attacked Islam. He attacked their beliefs, the belief systems.”
Matar, 24, said he considered late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini “a great person” but would not say whether he was following a fatwa, or edict, issued by Khomeini in Iran in 1989 that called for Rushdie’s death after the author published The Satanic Verses.
Iran has denied involvement in the attack. Matar, who lives in Fairview, New Jersey, said he hadn’t had any contact with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. He told the newspaper he had only read “a couple pages” of The Satanic Verses.