Washington – The United States Government described this Friday as reprehensible the attack against the writer Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed by a young man during a conference in northwestern New York state.
“The country and the world today witnessed a reprehensible attack on writer Salman Rushdie. This act of violence is horrific. All of us in the Biden-Harris Administration pray that he recovers soon,” the security adviser said in a statement. White House National Jake Sullivan.
Rushdie, 75 years old and threatened with death since 1989 by a fatwa issued by the Iranian regime, was attacked with a knife this Friday by an individual during a conference he was going to deliver in Chautauqua, in upstate New York, near Lake Erie and the Canadian border.
The aggressor, who was immediately arrested, is a young man identified by the police as Hadi Matar, 24, a resident of Fairview, New Jersey, who five hours after his arrest had not yet revealed the motives for the attack, according to a spokesman. of the state police from the door of the police station where he is arrested.
Rushdie is surviving on a ventilator, his agent, Andrew Wylie, said in a message to The New York Times.
“There is no good news,” the agent said. “Salman will probably lose an eye and has severed nerves in one arm, and his liver was also stabbed and damaged.”
Shortly before this statement, the New York State Police revealed that the writer had been admitted to Eire Hospital in Pennsylvania, where Rushdie “was still in the operating room” six hours after the attack, which gives an idea of the seriousness of the attack.