(New York) Salman Rushdie is better and has been able to speak, his son and his agent said on Sunday, two days after the British writer was violently stabbed ten times by an American of Lebanese origin during a conference in the northern United States.
Posted at 10:38 a.m.
Updated at 11:31 a.m.
Aged 75, he is no longer on life support and “the road to recovery has begun,” his agent Andrew Wylie said in a statement sent to the washington post.
“The injuries are serious, but his condition is moving in the right direction,” added this close friend of the author of the satanic verses stabbed Friday morning a dozen times in the neck and abdomen, during a literary conference at the cultural center of Chautauqua (State of New York).
His son Zafar Rushdie confirmed on Twitter that his father “was able to say a few words” on Saturday and that he “kept his sense of humor intact”.
The Rushdie family said they were “extremely relieved”.
premeditated
Salman Rushdie remains hospitalized since Friday in Erie, Pennsylvania, on the edge of the lake that separates the United States from Canada. According to New York Times Saturday evening, quoting Mr Wylie who had been alarmist on Friday, the famous British writer and naturalized American had started talking again.
The alleged assailant, Hadi Matar, 24, charged with “attempted murder and assault”, appeared in a Chautauqua court on Saturday evening, in a black and white striped prison uniform, handcuffed and masked and did not say a word. word, according to the local press.
Les procureurs ont estimé que l’attaque de vendredi était préméditée.
Le suspect, qui vit dans le New Jersey, a plaidé « non coupable » par la voix de son avocat et comparaîtra une nouvelle fois le 19 août.
L’attentat a provoqué une onde de choc, particulièrement en Occident : le président américain Joe Biden a condamné « une attaque brutale » et rendu hommage à M. Rushdie pour son « refus d’être intimidé et réduit au silence ».
Vivant à New York depuis 20 ans, Salman Rushdie avait repris une vie à peu près normale tout en continuant de défendre, dans ses livres, la satire et l’irrévérence.
Coïncidence, le magazine allemand Stern l’a interviewé il y a quelques jours, avant l’attaque : « Depuis que je vis aux États-Unis, je n’ai plus de problème […] My life is normal again”, assures the writer, in this interview to be published in full on August 18, saying he is “optimistic” despite “the daily death threats”.
“Universal” combat
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 satanic versesjudged by the most rigorous Muslims as blasphemous with regard to the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad, and leading the Iranian Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini to issue the “fatwa” demanding his assassination.
The “fatwa” has never been lifted and many of its translators have been injured by attacks, even killed, like the Japanese Hitoshi Igarashi, stabbed to death in 1991.
“His fight is ours, universal,” President Emmanuel Macron launched on Friday, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced a “cowardly attack” on Saturday.
The head of the Israeli government Yair Lapid meanwhile assured that this attack is “the result of decades of incitement to murder by the extremist Iranian regime”.
But in Muslim countries, the attack was welcomed by extremists.
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 writes. “Let us kiss the hand of him who tore the neck of the enemy of God with a knife”.
In neighboring Pakistan, the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan party – renowned for its violence against what it considers anti-Muslim blasphemy – also judged that Rushdie “deserved to be killed”.