The British writer of Indian origin Salman Rushdie has been the target of an attack during a presentation in the state of New York, according to the British network BBC, citing witnesses to the assault.
The former Booker Prize winner was speaking at an event at the Chautauqua Institution when an individual approached him and managed to knock him down. The status of the writer is currently unknown.
Rushdie, 75 years old, has spent years living threatened by Iran for his novel ‘The Satanic Verses’, considered blasphemous by the Iranian authorities and for which the then Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a decree in 1989 to ask for the death of the writer.
The Iranian government eventually distanced itself from Khomeini’s ‘fatwa’, but in 2012 a semi-official Iranian religious foundation raised Rushdie’s reward from $2.8 million to $3.3 million.
