Onstage at a lecture in New York state on Friday, Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born British author was stabbed in the neck and body. He was then flown to a hospital, according to police. The police and witnesses said that the attacker, who was being restrained by several individuals, stabbed Mr. Rushdie, 75, in the abdomen and the neck.
At the Chautauqua Institution in western New York, Rushdie, 75, was being introduced to speak to a large crowd on artistic freedom when a guy rushed the stage and lunged at the author, who has had a bounty on his head since the late 1980s.
The assailant has been taken into custody and identified as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from New Jersey. According to a federal law enforcement source who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, local police have contacted the F.B.I. for assistance in determining the suspect’s motives and history.
Rushdie is on a ventilator and unable to talk on Friday night following an attack that was denounced by authors and politicians throughout the world as an attack on the right to free speech.
Source: New York Times, NDTV
