Salman Rushdie occasion host thought assault was ‘dangerous prank’

The man set to interview Salman Rushdie in New York state moments earlier than the famend novelist was attacked stated on Sunday he initially thought somebody was taking part in a merciless joke, however was jolted to actuality when he noticed blood.

Henry Reese, president of the non-profit group City of Asylum, was additionally injured when an attacker invaded a literary occasion stage on Friday and stabbed Rushdie within the neck and stomach; he stated it took a number of moments to know what was going down.

“It was very difficult to understand. It looked like a sort of bad prank and it didn’t have any sense of reality,” Reese, 73, informed CNN.

“Then, when there was blood behind him, it became real.”

Reese, who appeared on the community Sunday with a big bandage over his bruised and swollen proper eye, declined to debate specifics in regards to the assault.

But he stated that when a person raced onstage he thought the incident was a “bad reference” to the spiritual decree that Iran’s leaders had issued calling for Muslims to kill Rushdie, and “not that it was a real attack.”

The suspected assailant Hadi Matar, 24, was wrestled to the bottom by workers and different viewers members earlier than being taken into police custody.

Rushdie spent years below police safety after Iranian leaders referred to as for his killing over his portrayal of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed in his novel “The Satanic Verses.”

Reese stated he was as a result of talk about with Rushdie the City of Asylum motion, which seeks to guard freedom of expression and which Reese stated he launched after listening to an inspirational Rushdie handle in 1997.

“That is the grim sort of irony — or maybe intention — to not only assault his body, but to assault everything that he represented,” Reese stated.

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