Salman Rushdie taken off ventilator following attack in New York state & More Latest News Here – Up Jobs

Rushdie’s son Zafar also released a statement on Twitter on Sunday morning confirming that his father was taken off the ventilator and was “able to say a few words.”

“Though his life changing injuries are severe, his usual feisty & defiant sense of humor remains intact,” Zafar Rushdie wrote.

Rushdie, 75, was attacked onstage Friday at the Chautauqua Institution, where he was about to be interviewed as part of a summer lecture series. The targeting of one of the world’s most famous authors sparked anger and concern among fans and shocked the literary world.

Witnesses among the crowd who had gathered to hear Rushdie speak said they saw the attacker stab him multiple times. Wylie told the Associated Press that Rushdie had suffered damage to his liver and nerves in one arm, and that he would probably lose an eye. A doctor in the audience attended to Rushdie before paramedics arrived and transported him to a hospital by helicopter.

Police took Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old New Jersey man, into custody at the scene. He was arraigned on Saturday and charged with attempted murder and assault.

Born in India, Rushdie had spent much of his life in Britain when he went into hiding after Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the author’s execution over the portrayal of Islam and the prophet Muhammad in his 1988 book “The Satanic Verses,” which was deemed blasphemous by some Muslims.

World leaders including President Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the attack on Rushdie, which many see as an attack on freedom of expression.

Sales of the controversial book have spiked dramatically on Amazon in recent days and, as of Sunday, the novel is No. 11 in the bestsellers list.

Although the Iranian bounty for his death was for more than $3 million, Rushdie — a British American citizen who moved to New York in the early 2000s — had appeared at public literary events in the past, sometimes without security guards visible. Attendees of the event in Chautauqua said there were no security checks on Friday. An official from the venue said the suspect had a pass to enter the grounds.

During an address at the Chautauqua Institute on Sunday afternoon, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) suggested that both Rushdie’s attacker and the suspect in the shooting at a Tops grocery store in Buffalo in May that left 10 dead were radicalized online.

Hochul added that government leaders both abroad and in the United States should also be held accountable for using language that can incite violence. “I will use every tool at my disposal, including my voice, to call out this radicalization that’s going on,” Hochul said.

Henry Reese, co-founder of the Pittsburgh-based City of Asylum, was onstage and was supposed to interview Rushdie on Friday. He was attacked in the face, and was treated and released from the hospital.

During an interview with Brian Stelter, host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” Reese, who had a visible bandage over one of his eyes, said he did not want to discuss the incident in detail.

But Reese said that at first, when the attacker jumped onstage, he “immediately thought someone was making some kind of bad reference” to the Iranian fatwa against Rushdie. He didn’t expect it to be “a real attack.”

“It looked like a bad prank, and it didn’t have any sense of reality. And then when there was blood behind him, it became real,” Reese said.

Tim Craig, Kelsey Ables, Joanna Slater, Elahe Izadi, Ron Charles and Carolyn Y. Johnson contributed to this report.