British author Salman Rushdie was ‘stabbed in the neck’ while performing in the United States. He was about to speak at a conference in New York State, at the Chautauqua Institution. “A suspect rushed to the scene and attacked Rushdie and an interviewer. Rushdie suffered an apparent neck injury after being stabbed and was airlifted to hospital by helicopter. His condition is not yet known. “ said the police of the State of New York, in a statement, stating that the attacker had been immediately arrested and taken into custody.

Present on site, un journalist for the American agency Associated Press claimed to have seen a man “hit or stab” the writer, while he was being introduced to the public.

The target of death threats for years

“The most terrible event has just happened at the Chautauqua Institution – Salman Rushdie has been attacked on stage. The amphitheater is evacuated”, writes a witness on social networks. Video images posted on social networks show spectators in a theater rushing on stage to help someone seen on the ground. The person who was to give the floor to the writer was also “slight head injury”according to the police.

Salman Rushdie was the target of death threats since the publication of “Satanic Verses” in 1988. A few months after the release of the book, in February 1989, the novel published in English had set the Muslim world ablazeconsidered by some to be blasphemous towards Islam and on February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, condemned the British writer to death and called on all “good Muslims” to execute him, creating a real manhunt against Salman Rushdie.

For ten years, Salman Rushdie had to live in hiding and under police protection. Based in New York for several years, Salman Rushdie had resumed a more or less normal life while continuing to defend, in his books, satire and irreverence.

Born in 1947 in Bombay, two months before India’s independence, he nevertheless tries not to be reduced to the scandal caused by the publication of the “Satanic Verses”. “My problem is that people continue to see me through the sole prism of the fatwa”said a few years ago this free-thinker who wants to be a writer, not a symbol.