Novelist Salman Rushdie Attacked, Wounded on Stage at New York Event

Novelist Salman Rushdie interviewed during Heartland Festival in Kvaerndrup, Denmark June 2, 2018. (Reuters)
Novelist Salman Rushdie interviewed during Heartland Festival in Kvaerndrup, Denmark June 2, 2018. (Reuters)
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Novelist Salman Rushdie Attacked, Wounded on Stage at New York Event

Novelist Salman Rushdie interviewed during Heartland Festival in Kvaerndrup, Denmark June 2, 2018. (Reuters)
Novelist Salman Rushdie interviewed during Heartland Festival in Kvaerndrup, Denmark June 2, 2018. (Reuters)

Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born novelist who was ordered killed by Iran in 1989 because of his writing, was attacked on stage at an event in New York and suffered an apparent stab wound to the neck, according to New York State Police and an eyewitness.

A man rushed to the stage at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York state and attacked Rushdie as he was being introduced, an eye witness said. A State Trooper present at the event took the attacker into custody, police said.

Rushdie was taken by helicopter to a hospital but his condition was not yet known, police said

"We are dealing with an emergency situation," a Chautauqua Institution spokesperson said when contacted by Reuters.

Rushdie fell to the floor when the man attacked him, and was then surrounded by a small group of people who held up his legs, seemingly to send more blood to his upper body, as the attacker was restrained, according to a witness attending the lecture who asked not to be named.

Rushdie, who was born into an Indian Muslim family, has faced death threats for his fourth novel, "The Satanic Verses," which some Muslims said contained blasphemous passages. The novel was banned in many countries with large Muslim populations upon its 1988 publication.

A year later, Khomeini, then Iran's supreme leader, pronounced a fatwa, or religious edict, calling for the killing of the novelist for blasphemy.

Rushdie went into hiding for many years. The Iranian government later backed away from the order and Rushdie has lived relatively openly in recent years. Iranian organizations, however, have raised a bounty worth millions of dollars for Rushdie's murder.

Rushdie was at the Chautauqua Institution to take part in a discussion about the United States serving as asylum for writers and artists in exile and "as a home for freedom of creative expression," according to the institution’s website.

The Wylie Agency, which represents Rushdie, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



Orban Says Hungary is Quitting the ICC to End its 'Half-hearted' Membership

A handout photo made available by the Hungarian Prime Minister's Press Office shows Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaking during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following their meeting in the government headquarters in Budapest, Hungary, 03 April 2025.  EPA/ZOLTAN FISCHER
A handout photo made available by the Hungarian Prime Minister's Press Office shows Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaking during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following their meeting in the government headquarters in Budapest, Hungary, 03 April 2025. EPA/ZOLTAN FISCHER
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Orban Says Hungary is Quitting the ICC to End its 'Half-hearted' Membership

A handout photo made available by the Hungarian Prime Minister's Press Office shows Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaking during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following their meeting in the government headquarters in Budapest, Hungary, 03 April 2025.  EPA/ZOLTAN FISCHER
A handout photo made available by the Hungarian Prime Minister's Press Office shows Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaking during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following their meeting in the government headquarters in Budapest, Hungary, 03 April 2025. EPA/ZOLTAN FISCHER

Hungary was never fully committed to the International Criminal Court, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday, a day after his government announced a decision to quit the global tribunal for war crimes and genocide.
Speaking on state radio, Orban offered justification for why Hungary did not detain Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday when Israel's prime minister arrived in Budapest for a state visit despite an ICC arrest warrant, The Associated Press reported.
“Hungary has always been half-hearted” in its ICC membership, said Orban, who on Thursday said the ICC was “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.” Hungary joined the ICC during Orban’s first term as prime minister in 2001.
“We signed an international treaty, but we never took all the steps that would otherwise have made it enforceable in Hungary,” Orban said, referring to the fact that Hungary’s parliament never promulgated the court’s statute into Hungarian law.
The court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, issued a warrant for Netanyahu's arrest in November on suspicion of crimes against humanity for his conduct of Israel's war in the Gaza Strip. Signatories to the ICC, such as Hungary, are required to arrest any suspects facing a warrant if they set foot on their soil.
The ICC and other international organizations have criticized Hungary's defiance of the warrant against Netanyahu. Days before the Israeli leader received a red carpet welcome with full military honors in Hungary's capital, the president of the court’s oversight body wrote to the government in Hungary reminding it of its “specific obligation to comply with requests from the court for arrest and surrender.”
Judges at the ICC have in the past dismissed similar arguments that failure to promulgate the court's statute exempts countries from complying with its rulings.
Hungary's decision to leave the ICC, a process that will take at least a year to complete, will make it the only country in the 27-member European Union that is not a signatory to the court. With 125 current signatory countries, only the Philippines and Burundi have ever withdrawn from the court as Hungary intends.