Murderer by motive – “Rushdie attacked because he hated Islam”

In an exclusive interview with The New York Post, the 24-year-old from New Jersey explained the reasons that led him to attack Rushdie. “He attacked Islam, the Islamic faith, the value system. He’s not a good person. I don’t like him at all,” the young man said. He stabbed the writer ten times last Friday before speaking at an event in Chautauqua, New York.

“Khomeini is a wonderful person”
Matar admitted that he “respected” Ayatollah Khomeini, who issued the 1989 fatwa against Rushdie and offered a $3 million reward for his head. “I think he’s a great person,” Matar said of Khomeini. He indicated that his lawyer had warned him not to elaborate on the case.

Photos of Khomeini and Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, who were assassinated by the US, were found on his social media accounts. The researchers therefore suspected that Matar was close to Shia extremism and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. In addition, the fake ID he had in his pocket after his arrest was in the name of a Hezbollah martyr. However, Matar stressed that he had no contact with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“Accidentally” became a terrorist?
In an interview with the New York Post, the attacker described himself as someone who had radicalized himself through social media in his bedroom in Fairview, New Jersey. He became a terrorist more ‘by accident’ than by conviction. At least that’s what he and his lawyer probably wanted investigators to believe in order to get a lighter sentence, observers said.

Matar also admitted that he was not familiar with Rushdie’s books, but had seen many videos of him on YouTube. He said he had “read only a few pages” of the Satanic Verses. “But I’ve seen a lot of his lectures. I don’t like fake people like him.” Meanwhile, he answered questions about a 2018 trip to the Middle East that his mother Silvana Fardos claimed had returned changed and radicalized. .

Mother distances herself
According to a New York Times report, the mother of the alleged attacker Salman Rushdie does not want to support her son. “I don’t want anything to do with him,” she said in an article on Wednesday. She also has nothing to say to her child, she said. However, she confirmed that in 2018 Matar returned from a trip to the Middle East “changed” and increasingly turned to the Islamic faith.

British-Indian author Rushdie has been in hospital with serious stab wounds since the attack. Rushdie has been persecuted for decades by religious fanatics for his novel The Satanic Verses, which critically examines Islam.