NEW YORK CITY
\nThe man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie at a literary event pleaded not guilty to attempted murder charges on Saturday, as the severely injured author appeared to show signs of improvement in hospital.
\nHadi Matar, 24, was arraigned in court in New York state, with prosecutors outlining how Rushdie had been stabbed approximately 10 times in what they described as a planned, premeditated assault.
\nAfter the on-stage attack on Friday, Rushdie had been helicoptered to hospital and underwent emergency surgery.
\nHis agent Andrew Wylie had said the writer was on a ventilator and in danger of losing an eye, but in an update on Saturday he told the \u2018New York Times that Rushdie had started to talk again, suggesting his condition had improved.
\nAuthor of \u2018The Satanic Verses\u2019 and \u2018Midnight\u2019s Children,\u2019 Rushdie had lived in hiding for years after Iran\u2019s first supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered his killing.
\nUS President Joe Biden on Saturday called it a \u201cvicious\u201d attack and offered prayers for Rushdie\u2019s recovery.
\n\u201cSalman 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. Truth. Courage. Resilience,\u201d Biden said in a statement.
\nMatar is being held without bail and has been formally charged with second-degree attempted murder and assault with a weapon. Police provided no information on his background or what might have motivated him.
\nThe 75-year-old novelist had been living under an effective death sentence since 1989 when Iran\u2019s then-supreme leader Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill the writer.
\nThe fatwa followed the publication of the novel \u2018The Satanic Verses\u2019 which enraged some Muslims who said it was blasphemous.
\nIn a recent interview with Germany\u2019s Stern magazine, Rushdie spoke of how, after so many years living with death threats, his life was \u201cgetting back to normal\u201d.
\n\u201cFor whatever it was, eight or nine years, it was quite serious,\u201d he told a Stern correspondent in New York. \u201cBut ever since I\u2019ve been living in America, since the year 2000, really there hasn\u2019t been a problem in all that time.\u201d
\nRushdie moved to New York in the early 2000s and became a US citizen in 2016. Despite the continued threat to his life, he was increasingly seen in public, often without noticeable security.
\nSecurity was not particularly tight at Friday\u2019s event at the Chautauqua Institution, which hosts arts programmes in a tranquil lakeside community near Buffalo.
\nWitnesses said Rushdie was seated on stage and preparing to speak when Matar sprang up from the audience and managed to stab him before being wrestled to the ground by staff and other spectators.
\nMatar\u2019s family appears to come from the village of Yaroun in southern Lebanon, though he was born in the United States, according to a Lebanese official.
\nAn AFP reporter who visited the village on Saturday was told that Matar\u2019s parents were divorced and his father, a shepherd, still lived there.
\nJournalists who approached his father\u2019s home were turned away.
\nMatar was \u201cborn and raised in the US,\u201d the head of the local municipality, Ali Qassem Tahfa, told AFP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW YORK CITY The man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie at a literary event pleaded not guilty to attempted murder charges on Saturday, as the severely injured author appeared to show signs of improvement in hospital. Hadi Matar, 24, was arraigned in court in New York state, with prosecutors outlining how Rushdie had been stabbed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277272,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-277255","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n