The man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie said he respected Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini but would not say if he was inspired by a fatwa issued by the former Iranian leader, according to a New York Post interview published on Wednesday.
Hadi Matar also told the Post he had only “read a couple pages” of Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses” and that a tweet in the winter announcing the author’s visit to the Chautauqua Institution gave him the idea of going there.
Rushdie, 75, was set to deliver a lecture on artistic freedom at the western New York venue when police say 24-year-old Matar rushed the stage and stabbed the Indian-born writer on Friday last week….