The authorities and establishment media will ignore or explain away this ingenuous statement of intent and find the real cause of the attack elsewhere: will Matar soon be declared mentally ill?
“Salman Rushdie attacker praises Iran’s ayatollah, surprised author survived: jailhouse interview,” by Steven Vago and Ben Kesslen, New York Post, August 17, 2022:
The New Jersey man who allegedly stabbed Salman Rushdie in Western New York last week praised Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini in an exclusive jailhouse interview with The Post on Wednesday — and admitted he didn’t think the author would survive the attack.
“When I heard he survived, I was surprised, I guess,” Hadi Matar, of Fairview, NJ, said in a video interview from the Chautauqua County Jail.
The 24-year-old was mum on whether he was inspired by the late Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death in 1989 over the author’s book “The Satanic Verses,” citing a warning by his defense attorney.
“I respect the ayatollah. I think he’s a great person. That’s as far as I will say about that,” Matar said, noting he only “read like two pages” of Rushdie’s controversial novel.
“I read a couple pages. I didn’t read the whole thing cover to cover,” he said.
The accused stabber denied being in contact with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and alluded to acting completely alone.
He said he was inspired to go to Chautauqua after seeing a tweet sometime in the winter announcing Rushdie’s visit.
“I don’t like the person. I don’t think he’s a very good person,” he said about Rushdie. “I don’t like him. I don’t like him very much.
“He’s someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems.”…
His mother, who has disowned Matar over the alleged assault, said the visit “changed” him and that he became more religious and isolated himself in her basement after returning….
Matar said little else about Rushdie specifically but complained about conditions in the jail, where he is being held without bail. “A lot of the food they have given me is not allowed in my religion to eat,” he said, adding that despite that, he is “doing all right.”…
Matar “didn’t bring a wallet. He had cash, prepaid Visa cards with him. He had false identification with him,” Schmidt said….
Matar is being held without bail, in part because prosecutors feared he would be awarded a bounty for the attack.
“Even if this court sets a million-dollar bail, we stand a risk that this bail could be met because of that,” Schmidt said….
