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Chautauqua, New York, shortly after the assassination: Salman Rushdie is stretchered to a helicopter that takes him to a hospital (video still)
Photo: AP / dpa
Author Salman Rushdie was assassinated in Chautauqua, New York, on Friday.
A man lunged at 75-year-old Rushdie with a knife and stabbed him just before the writer was due to speak at an event on artistic freedom.
According to Reuters news agency, citing Rushdie's literary agent Andrew Wylie, Rushdie was seriously injured.
"Not good news," Wylie said several hours after the crime.
'Salman will probably lose an eye;
the nerves in his arm were severed and his liver was punctured and damaged.” He is on artificial respiration and cannot speak.
Hours after the crime, the police released the first details about the alleged attacker.
The suspect's name is Hadi M., is 24 years old and lives in New Jersey, he had a ticket to the event with Rushdie.
A motive is not yet apparent, and there were no indications of a threat prior to the reading.
Hadi M. was arrested immediately after the crime and is now in custody.
According to initial findings, he probably had no accomplices.
"At this point we believe he acted alone, but we are now trying to find out if he did," police spokesman James O'Callaghan said at a news conference on Friday.
A backpack was secured at the crime scene.
A number of search warrants are also being sought.
According to O'Callaghan, Rushdie was still undergoing surgery at the time of the press conference.
He had been wounded in the neck by the attacker with a knife.
In addition to Rushdie, police said the event's moderator, who was supposed to be interviewing him on stage, was also slightly injured.
After the attack, witnesses described the drama of those minutes.
Bradley Fisher, a spectator at the event, told Reuters news agency that a man suddenly jumped onto the stage.
'He was hitting Rushdie, it looked like a punch in the chest.
Then he repeated punches to the chest and neck.
People were screaming.'
According to another witness, Rushdie fell to the ground as a result of the attack.
Some spectators held his legs up to allow blood to flow to his torso, while others held the attacker back.
There was also a doctor in the audience who took care of Rushdie.
"The Iranian mullah regime bears responsibility"
Meanwhile, FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Saai blamed Iran for the attack.
"The Iranian mullahs' regime is also responsible for this cowardly attack," Djir-Sarai wrote on Twitter on Friday evening.
"Everyone who wants normal relations with this regime should know that." Djir-Sarai was born in Iran and grew up in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini had published a fatwa because of Rushdie's work »The Satanic Verses« (»The Satanic Verses«) from 1988, which called for the author to be killed.
Some Muslims felt their religious sensibilities were offended by the work.
It was initially unclear whether the attack on Rushdie was related to the decades-old fatwa.
Global horror at the act
The act sparked global outrage.
US Senator and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on Twitter that the act was an “attack on freedom of speech and thought.
French President Emmanuel Macron wrote that Rushdie was struck by "hatred and barbarism".
Outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was "appalled".
Harry Potter author Joanne K. Rowling and best-selling author Stephen King also expressed their dismay and wrote that they hoped Rushdie was doing well.
Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (Greens) described the attack as an attack on the freedom of literature and freedom of thought.
Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) was shocked and wished Rushdie a speedy recovery.
The Greens co-chairman Omid Nouripour wrote of the worst "fruit of a hatred that has been fueled and financed by the Iranian regime for decades."
Writer Günter Wallraff, who hid Rushdie in his home in Cologne-Ehrenfeld in 1993, said the news was "of course a blow to me".
The American authors' association PEN America was shocked by the attack on its former president.
Rushdie has been attacked for his words for decades, but he has never wavered and never hesitated, Chairwoman Suzanne Nossel said in a statement.
Rushie was born in the year of Indian independence in 1947 in the metropolis of Mumbai (then Bombay).
He later studied history at King's College, Cambridge.
He had his breakthrough as an author with the book "Mitternachtskinder" ("Midnight's Children"), which was awarded the prestigious Booker Prize in 1981.
In it he tells the story of India's detachment from the British Empire based on the life stories of protagonists who are born at the precise moment of independence and are endowed with supernatural abilities.
In all, Rushdie has published more than two dozen fiction, non-fiction, and other writings.
His style is called Magical Realism, in which realistic events are interwoven with fantastic events.
Nevertheless, he is absolutely committed to the truth.
He sees this increasingly in danger, which is also the focus of his most recent publication of essays, which came out in Germany under the title "Languages of Truth".
The writer, who has lived in New York for many years, braces himself against Trumpists and corona deniers.
«Truth is a struggle, there is no question.
And maybe never as much as now, »he said in an interview with the US broadcaster PBS last year.
Sol/dpa/Reuters