(London) The alleged attacker of writer Salman Rushdie had returned “changed” and more religious from a 2018 trip to Lebanon, his family’s country of origin, his mother told the website. DailyMail.
Posted at 1:09 p.m.
Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old American charged with “attempted murder and assault” for stabbing the author of the satanic verses Friday in eastern New York, lived with his mother in Fairview, New Jersey, on the opposite bank of the Hudson River from Manhattan.
Silvana Fardos, who has lived in the United States for 26 years, told the site that her son traveled to Lebanon in 2018 to visit his father. The parents, both Shiite Lebanese, divorced in 2004.
“I expected him to come back motivated, finish school, graduate and get a job. But instead he locked himself in [sa chambre] in the basement. He had changed a lot, he didn’t say anything to me or his sisters for months,” she said.
“He once argued with me and asked me why I had encouraged him to study instead of focusing on religion,” added the 46-year-old teaching assistant, also an interpreter. Arabic-English in a secondary school.
Saying to herself “sorry for Mr. Rushdie”, of whom she knew nothing before this attack, she assured not to deal with politics, denied knowing anyone in Iran and judged that her son was “responsible for his actions” .
PHOTO PAUL HACKETT, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Writer Salman Rushdie
The federal police (FBI) searched the accommodation of the latter and seized in particular knives, a computer and books, according to her.
PHOTO EDUARDO MUNOZ, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Onlookers outside the house where Hadi Matar lived in Fairview, New Jersey
Stabbed a dozen times in the neck and abdomen, Salman Rushdie, 75, saw his state of health improve, according to his relatives.
Iran, after three days of silence, on Monday “categorically” denied any involvement in the attack and blamed the perpetrator, 33 years after Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa sentencing him to death.
Salman Rushdie set part of the Muslim world ablaze with the publication in 1988 of satanic versesa novel judged by the most rigorous as blasphemous against the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad.