President Joe Biden has expressed his shock after the ‘vicious attack’ on Salman Rushdie adding that he prays for his health and recovery.
In his statement on Saturday night, he praised both the first responders and Rushdie’s “refusal to be intimidated.”
Biden said he was grateful to the brave people who ran to help the bereaved author.
“Jill and I were shocked and saddened to learn of the brutal attack on Salman Rushdie in New York yesterday. We pray with all Americans and people around the world for his health and recovery. I am grateful to the first responders and the brave individuals who mobilized to help Rushdie and contain the attacker,” Biden’s statement began.
Salman Rushdie – with his insight into humanity, with his unparalleled sense of story, with his refusal to be intimidated or silenced – stands for essential, universal ideals. Truth. Courage. Resistance. The ability to share ideas without fear. These are the building blocks of any free and open society. And today we reaffirm our commitment to those deeply American values in solidarity with Rushdie and all those who stand up for freedom of expression,” he added.
Joe Biden released a statement on Saturday hailing the author as “for essential, universal ideals”
President says author represents ‘the ability to share ideas without fear’
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also took to Twitter to post a statement of support for Rushdie’s recovery.
“I am shocked by the cowardly attack on Salman Rushdie and pray for his speedy recovery,” Clinton said.
‘As he once wrote: ‘The work of a poet’ [is] to name the unnameable, point out fraudsters, take sides, argue, shape the world and prevent her from going to sleep.’
On Friday, the White House had labeled the attack on Rushdie “terrible” and emphasized how the Biden-Kamala Harris administration prayed for the famed author’s speedy recovery.
Hillary Clinton tweeted: ‘I am shocked by the cowardly attack on Salman Rushdie and pray for his speedy recovery’
Mrs. Clinton also tweeted how she prayed for Rushdie’s speedy recovery
British-born author Sir Salman Rushdie (pictured in 2019) received death threats and a fatwa from Iran for his 1988 novel, the Satanic Verses. He has lived in the US since 2000 and was preparing to lecture on America as a refuge for writers in exile
Rushdie remained hospitalized on Saturday with serious injuries as police sought to determine the motive behind an attack that was internationally condemned.
The accused attacker, 24-year-old Hadi Matar of Fairview, New Jersey, pleaded in court on Saturday during a hearing.
Rushdie, 75, was due to give a talk on artistic freedom at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York, when police said Matar stormed onto the stage and stabbed the Indian-born writer, who has died since his 1988 novel ‘The Satanic Verses’. prompted Iran to urge Muslims to kill him.
After hours of surgery, Rushdie was on a ventilator and unable to speak as of Friday night, according to his agent, Andrew Wylie.
The novelist would likely lose an eye and had nerve damage in his arm and wounds to his liver, Wylie said.
The stabbing was condemned by writers and politicians around the world as an attack on freedom of expression.
Neither local nor federal authorities released additional details about the investigation on Saturday. Police said Friday they had not found a motive for the attack.
An initial police check of Matar’s social media accounts revealed that he was sympathetic to Shia extremism and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), although no definitive links had been found.
The IRGC is a powerful faction that controls a business empire, as well as elite armed and intelligence agencies that Washington accuses of conducting a global extremist campaign.
The authors suspect the attacker was pinned down by witnesses and security personnel moments after Friday’s attack
People rushed to help the author after the attack, during which the attacker was stopped by witnesses. The motive for the stabbing is currently unknown
Asked for comment on the case, Matar’s lawyer Barone said: “We’re still in the early stages and, frankly, in cases like this I think it’s important to remember that people need to have an open mind. They have to watch everything. They can’t just assume that something happened for what they think it happened.’
A first hearing in the case is scheduled for Friday, he said.
Matar was born in California and recently moved to New Jersey. He had a fake driver’s license with him. He was arrested on the spot by a state trooper after being wrestled to the ground by onlookers.
Witnesses said he was not speaking when he attacked the author. Rushdie was stabbed 10 times, prosecutors said during Matar’s arraignment.
The attack was premeditated; Prosecutors said in court that Matar traveled by bus to Chautauqua Institution, an educational retreat about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the shores of Lake Erie, and bought a pass that allowed him to attend Rushdie’s speech. Those in attendance said there were no clear security checks.
FBI officials went to Matar’s last listed address Friday night, in Fairview, a Bergen County township across the Hudson River from Manhattan.
Rushdie, who was born to a Muslim Kashmiri family in Mumbai before moving to Britain, has long faced death threats for The Satanic Verses which are considered by some Muslims to be blasphemous passages. The book was banned in many countries with large Muslim populations.
Hadi Matar, 24, appeared in court on Saturday charged with attempted murder and second-degree assault after being moved from New York’s state police station in Jamestown after Friday’s attack.
In 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Iran’s Supreme Leader, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims to kill the author and anyone involved in the book’s publication for blasphemy. Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of the novel, was stabbed to death in 1991 in a case that remains unsolved.
There has been no official government response in Iran to the attack on Rushdie, but several hardline Iranian newspapers have praised his attacker.
Iranian organizations, some with ties to the government, have raised a multimillion-dollar bounty for Rushdie’s murder. Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in 2019 that the fatwa was “irrevocable”.
Ali Tehfe, mayor of Yaroun in southern Lebanon, said Matar was the son of a man from the city. The suspect’s parents emigrated to the United States and he was born and raised there, the mayor said.
When asked whether Matar or his parents had any ties to or support for the Iranian-backed armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon, Tehfe said he had “no information at all” about their political views.
A Hezbollah official told Reuters on Saturday that the group had no additional information about the attack on Rushdie.