SALMAN Rushdie has been taken off a ventilator and speaks a day after being stabbed 15 times.
Rushdie stays in hospital after suffering serious injuries, including damage to his liver, and severed nerves in an arm and an eye.
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Aatish Taseer, a fellow author, tweeted Saturday that Rushdie was “on the ventilator and talking (and joking)”. Rushdie’s agent confirmed the news.
Earlier on Saturday, Rushdie’s accused attacker pleaded not guilty after allegedly stabbing the author 15 times.
Hadi Matar, 24, was charged with attempted murder and assault after inflicting the horrific assault while Rushdie took the stage to prepare for a lecture on Friday.
Police had identified the suspect as Matar, who was arrested after the attack on the Chautauqua Institution, a non-profit education and retreat center.
A lawyer for Matar made the not-guilty plea on his behalf today at a hearing in New York.
Matar appeared in court wearing a black and white jumpsuit and a white face mask. His hands were cuffed in front of him.
He was arraigned last night on charges and remanded in custody without bail, the Chautauqua Co. office said. DA. New York State Police said on Saturday that Matar of Fairview, New Jersey, was being held in the Chautauqua County Jail.
The bloody attack on the author was met with shock and outrage by much of the world, along with tributes and praise to the award-winning author who has faced death threats for over 30 years for his novel The Satanic Verses.
Investigators have tried to determine whether the alleged attacker, born ten years after The Satanic Verses was published, was acting alone.
US law enforcement officials last night unveiled an initial investigation that suggested Matar has sympathy for the Iranian regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the New York Post reported.
He was born in the US to Lebanese parents who immigrated from Yaroun, a border village in southern Lebanon, said the mayor, Ali Tehfe.
A police officer and a county deputy sheriff were assigned to Rushdie’s lecture, and police confirmed that the officer had caught the man.
But after the attack, some longtime visitors to the center wondered why there wasn’t tighter security for the event, given the bounty on his head that offered more than $3 million to anyone who killed him.
ARTISTIC FREEDOM
While Rushdie is in hospital, Iran’s dictatorship has celebrated the horrific attack, branding him a “renegade” and “heretic” while praising his attacker for “severing the neck of the enemy of God with a knife”.
More than three decades ago, the regime called for Rushdie’s murder and forced him into hiding.
The ultra-conservative Iranian newspaper Kayhan praised the stabbing because its chief Hossein Shariatmadari described Rushdie as “depraved”.
He said: “Bravo to this brave and conscientious man who attacked the renegade and depraved Salman Rushdie in New York.
“Let’s kiss the hands of the one who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife.”
And in a chilling warning, the vengeful editor warned on Saturday that former US President Donald Trump and ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “are next”.
FARS News, another regime-owned outlet, accused Rushdie of “insulting the prophet of Islam (PBUH)” with the book’s “anti-religious content.”
Rushdie was presented with a lecture to an audience of hundreds about artistic freedom when the man ran to the stage and lunged at the novelist.
Shocked attendees rushed to his rescue with photos of the scene where Rushdie lay on stage as a crowd surrounded him.
Blood splattered across a screen in the lecture hall and a chair on which Rushdie was sitting.
He was later airlifted to hospital.