Indian-born British writer Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed in August because of a death edict by Islamic Republic’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini, has lost sight in one eye and use of a hand.
His literary agent Andrew Wyle revealed the extent of his injuries on Sunday, adding that the author, who faced death threats for the 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, almost all his life remained in hospital without giving any information about his whereabouts.
He was stabbed repeatedly for 20 seconds by Hadi Matar -- a 24-year-old resident of New Jersey who appreciates Khomeini -- in August as he was about to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York state.
Noting that the 75-year-old's injuries were "profound," he said, "He had three serious wounds in his neck." "One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso. So, it was a brutal attack."
Rushdie has lived with a bounty on his head since The Satanic Verses prompted Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa urging Muslims to kill him. In 2012, it was widely reported that the 15 Khordad Foundation, a quasi-official religious body in Iran, had increased an existing bounty offered for killing Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million.
While Iran’s reformist president Mohammad Khatami in 1998 assured Britain the Iranian authorities would “neither hinder nor assist assassination operations on Rushdie,” Ali Khamenei, leader after Khomeini’s death in 1989, has several times said the edit, or ‘fatwa,’ was still in place. In 2019 Twitter deleted a message on Khamenei’s account reiterating this.
