Stabbed in August in the United States, the British writer Salman Rushdie has since lost the sight of one eye and the use of one hand, among other serious consequences, his agent said in an interview with the Spanish daily El Pais.
“He lost sight in one eye. He suffered three serious neck injuries.
He is disabled in one hand because the nerves in his arm have been severed.
And he has about 15 other chest and torso injuries,” Andrew Wylie said.
“His wounds were very deep (…) It was a brutal attack”, but “he will live”, he added, thus detailing for the first time the state of health of the writer for several weeks, without indicating whether he is still in hospital.
On August 12, Salman Rushdie was about to speak at a conference in upstate New York (northeast) when a man burst onto the stage and stabbed him repeatedly, especially in the neck and abdomen.
Evacuated by helicopter to a hospital, the author of “Satanic Verses” had to be briefly placed on a ventilator before his condition improved.
An attack that had shocked
The main suspect, Hadi Matar, an American of Lebanese origin then aged 24, was arrested immediately after the incident and pleaded not guilty during his trial which opened in mid-August in a court in Mayville, in New York State.
The attack shocked the West, but was hailed by extremists in Muslim countries such as Iran and Pakistan.
The writer has been pursued for 33 years by a fatwa from the Iranian Supreme Guide condemning him to death.
