Author Salman Rushdie criticizes organizers after knife attack

Eight months after a life-threatening knife attack on Salman Rushdie at a conference in the US, the writer has sharply criticized the organizers.

He has given hundreds of lectures in recent years, the 75-year-old says to weekly magazine Die Zeit on Wednesday. “And I always said to the organizers, don’t worry about safety, but you have to provide a certain level of safety, like for all people who are famous.”

But “unfortunately nothing has been done at this location,” Rushdie said. There were no security measures.

He had no idea he was unprotected on stage. “I assumed that the organizers had done what anyone would have done.”

The British-Indian author was attacked and seriously injured on August 12 during the conference in Chautauqua, New York. He has been blind in one eye ever since. The alleged assailant Hadi M., an American citizen with Lebanese roots, must answer in court for attempted murder.

Rushdie lived for years under strict police protection in ever-changing secret locations. Iran’s then spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for the writer to be killed for allegedly insulting the prophet Mohammed in Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses. Before the attack, however, Rushdie led a relatively normal life and made regular public appearances.

His new novel «Victory City» was published in English in February. A German translation will be available in bookstores on April 20. It was completed before the attack, which Rushdie told Die Zeit: “If I had not finished this book before the attack, there was a real risk that I would have gone off track with the novel.” (saw/sda/afp)