Rushdie’s cheek and pooling on the floor. “It took like five men to pull him away and he was still stabbing,” said Linda Abrams, who attended the lecture in the front row. The attack stunned onlookers, who had gathered in the 4,000-seat amphitheater at the Chautauqua Institution, a summertime destination for literary and arts programming. He said that the police were working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the local sheriff’s office and that investigators were in the process of obtaining search warrants for a backpack and electronic devices that were found at the institution. Staniszewski of the New York State Police identified the suspect in the attack as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old New Jersey man who was arrested at the scene, but said at a news conference late Friday afternoon that there was no indication yet of a motive. “Salman will likely lose one eye the nerves in his arm were severed and his liver was stabbed and damaged.” Rushdie was on a ventilator and could not speak. Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, said Friday evening that Mr. Rushdie was taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital in Erie, Pa., where he was in surgery for several hours on Friday afternoon. Rushdie, 75, in the abdomen and the neck, the police and witnesses said, straining to continue the attack even as several people held him back. Rushdie was scheduled to give a talk about the United States as a safe haven for exiled writers. On Friday morning, any sense that threats to his life were a thing of the past was dispelled when an attacker rushed the stage of Chautauqua Institution here in Western New York, where Mr. Salman Rushdie spent years in hiding after the leadership of Iran called for his death following the publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses.” But in recent years, declaring “Oh, I have to live my life,” he re-entered society, regularly appearing in public around New York City without evident security.

Herman for The New York TimesĬHAUTAUQUA, N.Y. The author has faced death threats for his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses.” Credit Credit. Salman Rushdie was stabbed while onstage in Chautauqua, N.Y., the state police said.

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