Salman Rushdie off ventilator and talking after stabbing attack, agent says

"The Satanic Verses" author Salman Rushdie was taken off a ventilator and was talking Saturday, a day after he was stabbed as he prepared to give a lecture in upstate New York.

Rushdie, 75, was stabbed on stage at the Chautauqua Institution before he was slated to give a lecture, New York state police said Friday. He was airlifted to a hospital in northwestern Pennsylvania and underwent surgery.

He suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and an eye. He will likely lose the injured eye.

Rushdie remained hospitalized with serious injuries, but fellow author Aatish Taseer tweeted in the evening that he was "off the ventilator and talking (and joking)." Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, confirmed that information without offering further details.

Hadi Matar, 24, is accused of attacking him Friday, but pleaded not guilty on Saturday to attempted murder in the second degree and assault charges. His next court appearance is Friday.

Matar's attorney entered the plea on his behalf during an arraignment in western New York. The suspect appeared in court wearing a black and white jumpsuit and a white face mask, with his hands cuffed in front of him.

A judge ordered him held without bail after District Attorney Jason Schmidt told her Matar took steps to purposely put himself in position to harm Rushdie, getting an advance pass to the event where the author was speaking and arriving a day early bearing a fake ID.

"This was a targeted, unprovoked, pre-planned attack on Mr. Rushdie," Schmidt said.

Public defender Nathaniel Barone complained that authorities had taken too long to get Matar in front of a judge while leaving him "hooked up to a bench at the state police barracks."

"He has that constitutional right of presumed innocence," Barone added.

The attack was met with shock and outrage from much of the world, along with tributes and praise for the award-winning author who for more than 30 years has faced death threats for "The Satanic Verses."

Authors, activists and government officials cited Rushdie's courage and longtime advocacy of free speech despite the risks to his own safety. Writer and longtime friend Ian McEwan called Rushdie "an inspirational defender of persecuted writers and journalists across the world," and actor-author Kal Penn cited him as a role model "for an entire generation of artists, especially many of us in the South Asian diaspora toward whom he’s shown incredible warmth."

President Joe Biden said Saturday in a statement that he and first lady Jill Biden were "shocked and saddened" by the attack.

"Salman Rushdie — with his insight into humanity, with his unmatched sense for story, with his refusal to be intimidated or silenced — stands for essential, universal ideals," the statement read. "Truth. Courage. Resilience. The ability to share ideas without fear. These are the building blocks of any free and open society."

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U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a tweet that he was "appalled" by the incident and expressed support for Rushdie’s recovery.

"Appalled that Sir Salman Rushdie has been stabbed while exercising a right we should never cease to defend. Right now my thoughts are with his loved ones. We are all hoping he is okay," Johnson wrote on Friday.

French President Emmanuel Macron also tweeted his support for Rushdie following the attack.

"[For] 33 years, Salman Rushdie has embodied freedom and the fight against obscurantism. He has just been the victim of a cowardly attack by the forces of hatred and barbarism. His fight is our fight; it is universal. Now more than ever, we stand by his side," Macron said.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also condemned the attack.

"This senseless violence against a celebrated author is also an assault on global freedom of expression and deserves unequivocal condemnation. May he have a full recovery," Albanese added

Rushdie, a native of India who has since lived in Britain and the U.S., is known for his surreal and satirical prose style, beginning with his Booker Prize-winning 1981 novel "Midnight's Children," in which he sharply criticized India's then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

"The Satanic Verses" drew death threats after it was published in 1988, with many Muslims regarding as blasphemy a dream sequence based on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, among other objections. Rushdie's book had already been banned and burned in India, Pakistan and elsewhere before Iran's Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a religious decree, or fatwa, calling for Rushdie's death in 1989.

Khomeini died that same year, but the fatwa remains in effect. Iran’s current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, never issued a fatwa of his own withdrawing the edict, though Iran in recent years hasn’t focused on the writer.

Investigators were working to determine whether the suspect, born a decade after "The Satanic Verses" was published, acted alone.

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District Attorney Schmidt alluded to the fatwa as a potential motive in arguing against bail.

"Even if this court were to set a million dollars bail, we stand a risk that bail could be met," Schmidt said.

"His resources don’t matter to me. We understand that the agenda that was carried out yesterday is something that was adopted, and it’s sanctioned by larger groups and organizations well beyond the jurisdictional borders of Chautauqua County," the prosecutor said.

Barone, the public defender, said after the hearing that Matar has been communicating openly with him and that he would spend the coming weeks trying to learn about his client, including whether he has psychological or addiction issues.

A state trooper and a county sheriff’s deputy were assigned to Rushdie’s lecture, and police said the trooper made the arrest. But afterward, some longtime visitors to the Chautauqua Institution questioned why there wasn’t tighter security given the threats against Rushdie and a bounty of more than $3 million on his head.

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On Saturday, the center said it was boosting security through measures such as requiring photo IDs to purchase gate passes, which previously could be obtained anonymously. Patrons entering the amphitheater where Rushdie was attacked will also be barred from carrying bags of any type.

The changes, along with an increased presence of armed police officers on the bucolic grounds, came as something of a shock to Chautauquans who have long relished the laid-back atmosphere for which the nearly 150-year-old vacation colony is known.

Matar is from Fairview, New Jersey. Rosaria Calabrese, manager of the State of Fitness Boxing Club, a small, tightly knit gym in nearby North Bergen, said Matar joined April 11 and participated in about 27 group sessions for beginners looking to improve their fitness before emailing her several days ago to say he wanted to cancel his membership because "he wouldn’t be coming back for a while."

Gym owner Desmond Boyle said he saw "nothing violent" about Matar, describing him as polite and quiet, yet someone who always looked "tremendously sad." He said Matar resisted attempts by him and others to welcome and engage him.

"He had this look every time he came in. It looked like it was the worst day of his life," Boyle said.

Matar was born in the United States to parents who emigrated from Yaroun in southern Lebanon, The Associated Press learned.

Flags of the Iran-backed Shia militant group Hezbollah are visible across the village, along with portraits of leader Hassan Nasrallah, Khamenei, Khomeini and slain Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Iran’s theocratic government and its state-run media assigned no motive for the attack. 

News about the stabbing has led to renewed interest in "The Satanic Verses," which topped best seller lists after the fatwa was issued in 1989. As of Saturday night, the novel ranked No. 11 on Amazon.com.

The death threats and bounty Rushdie faced over the book after its publication led him to go into hiding under a British government protection program, which included an around-the-clock armed guard. After nine years of seclusion, Rushdie cautiously resumed more public appearances.

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In 2012, he published a memoir about the fatwa titled "Joseph Anton," the pseudonym he used while in hiding.

He said during a New York talk that year that terrorism was really the art of fear: "The only way you can defeat it is by deciding not to be afraid."