The man suspected of stabbing author Salman Rushdie on Friday has been charged with attempted murder in the second degree and assault in the second degree.
“The individual responsible for the attack yesterday, Hadi Matar, has now been formally charged with attempted murder in the second degree and assault in the second degree,” Chautauqua County district attorney Jason Schmidt said Saturday, according to Reuters.
Law enforcement is looking into whether the attack by Matar was premeditated to determine if additional charges should be filed, Schmidt added, according to the outlet.
Twenty-four-year-old Matar was born in California and recently moved to New Jersey, according to NBC News New York.
A review of his social-media accounts showed the suspect “is sympathetic to Shia extremism and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGS) causes,” according to the outlet, but there are no definitive links between Matar and the IRGS, and the motive of the attack remains unclear.
Rushdie was stabbed repeatedly in the neck and abdomen Friday after the suspect rushed on stage and attacked the author while he was preparing to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York. He is on a ventilator and is unable to speak, according to recent reports.
“The news is not good,” his agent, Andrew Wylie, told the New York Times. “Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.”
Rushdie, 75, has been under threat since 1989, when the former and first supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for the author to be killed in 1989.
Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses was published in 1988, and included what Khomeini considered to be a blasphemous depiction of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
An Iranian religious foundation had also issued a reward of over $3 million for anyone who kills Rushdie.