Hadi Matar, 24, a young American of Lebanese origin, has pleaded "not guilty" to attempted murder and assault on Salman Rushdie.

The writer, stabbed Friday in Chautauqua, New York, is still hospitalized but was able to say a few words on Saturday evening August 13.

Threatened with death since a "fatwa" from Iran in 1989, a year after the publication of the "Satanic Verses", Salman Rushdie was stabbed a dozen times on Friday, an attack which outrages in the West but which is hailed by extremists in Iran and Pakistan.

During a procedural hearing at the Chautauqua court, Hadi Matar appeared in a black and white striped prison uniform, handcuffed and masked, and did not say a word, according to the New York Times (NYT) and press photos.

Premeditated attack according to prosecutors

Prosecutors said Friday's attack at a cultural center in Chautauqua, where Salman Rushdie was going to give a talk, was premeditated.

At 75, the intellectual was stabbed at least ten times in the neck and abdomen. 

The suspect, who lives in New Jersey, pleaded "not guilty" by the voice of his lawyer and will appear again on August 19.

On Saturday, the authorities and relatives of Salman Rushdie remained silent on the state of health of the naturalized American Briton.

He was hospitalized on Friday on life support in Erie, Pennsylvania, on the edge of the lake that separates the United States from Canada.

However, his agent Andrew Wylie, a Friday night alarmist with the New York Times - "Salman will likely lose an eye, the nerves in his arm were severed and he was stabbed in the liver" - simply told the NYT that his client has started talking again on Saturday evening, without saying whether or not he was still on life support.

The attack caused a shock wave, especially in Western countries.

US President Joe Biden condemned "a brutal attack" and paid tribute to Salman Rushdie for his "refusal to be bullied and silenced".

"Daily death threats"

Living in New York for 20 years, Salman Rushdie had resumed an almost normal life while continuing to defend, in his books, satire and irreverence.

Coincidentally, the German magazine Stern interviewed him a few days ago, before the attack: "Since I have been living in the United States, I no longer have a problem (...) My life is back to normal" , assures the writer, in this interview to be published in full on August 18, saying he is "optimistic" despite "daily death threats".

Iran's "fatwa" has in fact never been lifted and many of its translators have been wounded by attacks or even killed, such as the Japanese Hitoshi Igarashi, who was stabbed to death in 1991.

In the United States, the giant Amazon reported an increase in orders for "Satanic Verses" and the New York bookstore Strand Bookstore told AFP that "people came to see what he wrote and know what we had" in stock.

"His fight is ours, universal," President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday, while UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was "horrified".

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced Saturday a "cowardly attack", and an "affront to freedom of expression".

"Nothing justifies a fatwa, a death sentence", was indignant Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical newspaper decimated by an Islamist attack in January 2015.

"We will have to repeat again and again that nothing justifies a fatwa. What right do individuals, who we don't care about knowing that they are religious, arrogate to themselves the right to say that someone must die?"

#SalmanRushdie https://t.co/XCoQJTVIQN

— Charlie Hebdo (@Charlie_Hebdo_) August 12, 2022

Attack hailed in Iran and Pakistan

In southern Lebanon, Ali Qassem Tahfa, the village chief of Yaroun, told AFP that Hadi Matar was "of Lebanese origin".

The young man "was born and raised in the United States. His mother and father are from Yaroun", he assured without commenting on the attack.

But in Iran, the ultra-conservative daily Kayhan praised the assailant: "Bravo to this brave and duty-conscious man who attacked the apostate and vicious Salman Rushdie," the newspaper wrote.

"Let us kiss the hand of him who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife".

And at the Tehran book market, Mehrab Bigdeli, a Shiite cleric, said he was "very happy to hear the news. Whoever the author is, I kiss his hand (...) God damn Salman Rushdie ".

In neighboring Pakistan, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan party – renowned for its violence against what it calls anti-Muslim blasphemy – also judged that the writer “deserved to be killed”.

Salman Rushdie, born in 1947 in India into a family of non-practicing Muslim intellectuals, set part of the Islamic world ablaze with the publication of the "Satanic Verses", leading the Iranian Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini to issue the "fatwa" demanding his assassination .

The author of fifteen novels, stories for young people, short stories and essays written in English had been forced to live in hiding and under police protection, going from hiding place to hiding place.

With AFP

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