Salman Rushdie as soon as complained about ‘too much security’ round him: Report

Salman Rushdie, who was attacked and stabbed on stage at a literary occasion right here, has beforehand complained about having an excessive amount of safety round him, based on a media report on Saturday.

The Mumbai-born author, who confronted Islamist dying threats for years after writing “The Satanic Verses”, was stabbed by a 24-year-old New Jersey resident recognized as Hadi Matar on stage on Friday whereas he was being launched on the occasion of the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York.

A bloodied Rushdie was airlifted from a discipline adjoining to the venue to a hospital in northwestern Pennsylvania the place the 75-year-old author underwent surgical procedure.

In 2001, Rushdie publicly complained about having an excessive amount of safety round him, The New York Post reported.

While attending the Prague Writers’ Festival, he advised reporters, “To be here and to find a large security operation around me has actually felt a little embarrassing… I thought it was really unnecessary and kind of excessive and was certainly not arranged at my request.”

“I spent a great deal of time before I came here saying that I really didn’t want that. So I was very surprised to arrive here and discover a really quite substantial operation, because it felt like being in a time warp, that I had gone back in time several years,” he was quoted as saying.

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Rushdie was stabbed within the neck as he was on the stage on the Chautauqua Institution, a not-for-profit neighborhood on Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York State, the place roughly 7,500 persons are in residence on any day throughout a nine-week season.

Following the assault on Friday, questions had been raised in regards to the safety precautions — or lack thereof — on the host establishment, which sits in a rural lake resort about 110 km south of Buffalo, New York.

The establishment’s management had rejected suggestions for fundamental safety measures, together with bag checks and steel detectors, fearing that will create a divide between audio system and the viewers, based on two sources who spoke with CNN.

The management additionally feared that it might change the tradition on the establishment, the sources stated.

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