'Like a sort of poor prank': Guy on stage with Salman Rushdie tells of horrific assault

Brady Knox

August 14, 03:32 PM August 14, 03:32 PM

The person who was meant to job interview novelist Salman Rushdie before he was attacked onstage in New York on Friday is talking out about how surprising the ambush was to him.

Henry Reese, co-founder of Town of Asylum, a nonprofit group primarily based in Pittsburgh that properties writers exiled for controversial writings, sat down for an job interview with CNN host Brian Stelter. Even though Rushdie was grievously wounded — he appears to be on his way to restoration — Reese acquired a small injury and is witnessed in the interview with a swollen eye and a patch on his confront.

"It was really tricky to understand, it appeared like a form of poor prank. It didn't have any feeling of actuality, and then, when there was blood behind him, it turned true," Reese stated.

SALMAN RUSHDIE STABBED A number of Periods Throughout FRENZIED Assault ONSTAGE

Reese declined to give any extra facts about the attack, indicating he did not want to discuss about it.

Soon after suffering extreme accidents on Friday, together with a neck wound, Rushdie has just been taken off a ventilator and started to converse again. His agent, Andrew Wylie, advised CNN of the fantastic information on Sunday.

“He’s off the ventilator, so the street to recovery has begun,” he stated. “It will be extended — the injuries are critical. But his ailment is headed in the correct direction.”

Prosecutors explained that the creator was stabbed 10 periods by Hadi Matar, a 24-yr-aged New Jersey man, in a premeditated assault, in accordance to the New York Times. A public defender for Matar, who is billed with attempted murder and assault, entered a not-guilty plea for the suspect. Matar is getting held in jail without bail, awaiting his up coming court look set for Friday.

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Rushdie may eliminate an eye, his liver was damaged, and the nerves in his arm are severed, Wylie explained to the newspaper.

Irrespective of the outpouring of help from most in the United States and West, solidarity wasn't discovered everywhere you go. In Iran — wherever the Ayatollah famously issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie's death subsequent his 1988 publication of The Satanic Verses, which lots of Muslims find blasphemous — the information was fulfilled with jubilation. The entrance web page of Keyhan, a newspaper published in Tehran, explained that Rushdie had been satisfied with "divine vengeance" and that former President Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo "are subsequent."