Mayville, NY -- The man charged with stabbing Salman Rushdie at a lecture hall in western New York learned in an interview that the great writer survived. said he was surprised. attack.
Hadi Matar, speaking to the New York Post from prison, said he decided to meet Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institute last winter after seeing a tweet about the writer's upcoming appearances.
"I don't like him. I don't think he is a very nice person," Matar told the newspaper. ``He attacked Islam. He did not say whether he was following a fatwa or decree issued by Khomeini in Iran in 1989. Death after the author publishes "The Devil's Verse".
Iran denies involvement in the attack. Matar, who lives in Fairview, New Jersey, said he had no contact with Iran's Revolutionary Guard. He told the Post that he had only read "a few pages" of "The Satanic Verse."
Rushdie, 75, suffered liver damage in Friday's attack and severed the nerves in his arm and eye, according to his agent. His agent, Andrew Wylie, said his condition had improved and he was on the road to recovery. He told the Post he took a bus to Buffalo and then took a lift to Chautauqua, about 40 miles (64 km) away.
He bought a pass to the grounds of the Chautauqua Institution and slept on the lawn the night before Rushdie's scheduled lecture.
Matar was born in the United States but holds dual citizenship in Lebanon, where his parents were born. His mother told reporters in an interview that Matar had visited to see his father in Lebanon in 2018, but he had changed and returned afterward. Withdrew from
