The madman from New Jersey who allegedly attacked Salman Rushdie in western New York last week said in an exclusive interview with the Post on Tuesday that Iran 'I don't think the author survived the attack.' ,” Hadi Matar of Fairview, New Jersey, said in a video interview from Chautauqua County Jail.
The 24-year-old can't say whether he was inspired by the Iranians. The leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, citing warnings by his lawyers, over his controversial book Satanic Verses, called for Rushdie's death in 1989, or issued an edict. 49} pointed out that only " read like two pages" of the novel.
"I read a few pages. I didn't read the whole thing from beginning to end," he added.
Matar denied contact with Iran's Revolutionary Guard, seeing a tweet announcing Rushdie's visit sometime in the winter,
"I don't like that guy. I don't think he's very nice," he said of Rushdie. I don't like him, I don't like him very much, he was the one who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, their belief systems."
