The man who allegedly stabbed novelist Salman Rushdie in a brutal attack last week called the late Iranian ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini “a great person” in comments to the New York Post today.
“I respect the ayatollah. I think he’s a great person,” said Hadi Matar, the suspect, during a video interview with the Post. “That’s as far as I will say about that.” Matar was taken into custody soon after he allegedly leapt onstage at a literary festival in Chatauqua, N.Y., and is currently awaiting a trial.
Although Rushdie, who was stabbed ten times, suffered serious injuries, he survived and is currently receiving medical care. Matar told the New York Post that he was “surprised” to hear that Rushdie had survived.
The Ayatollah Khomeini, the current regime’s founder, issued a fatwa for Rushdie’s murder in 1989. A bounty, raised in recent years, stood at approximately $3 million at the time of the Rushdie attack.
Matar was reported to have pro-Iranian-regime sympathies and to have posted images of Iranian supreme leaders and General Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian paramilitary leader killed in a U.S. drone strike, to his social-media accounts. Vice News reported that Western officials believe the attack was “guided” by individuals affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
But despite that, and despite a recent surge of murder plots orchestrated by the IRGC, Matar told the Post that he was not in contact with the group.
Earlier this month, the U.S. indicted a Tehran-based IRGC member for allegedly hiring an individual to plot an assassination of John Bolton, the former national-security adviser. Several other current and former U.S. officials, including former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, are reported to be under threat as well. A man in possession of a gun was arrested in late July outside the Brookyln home of Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American journalist whom the IRGC previously plotted to kidnap.