Salman Rushdie attacker ‘surprised’ the author survived

MAYVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — The man charged with stabbing Salman Rushdie on a lecture stage in western New York said in an interview that he was surprised to learn the author had survived.

Speaking to the New York Post from jail, Hadi Matar said he decided to see Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institution after he saw a tweet last winter about the writer’s planned appearance.

Matar wouldn’t say whether he was following a 1989 edict issued by the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that called for Rushdie’s death after he published his novel “The Satanic Verses.”

Rushdie suffered wounds to his neck, liver, eye and an arm in the attack.