Salman Rushdie Attack | Assailant Says 'Surprised' Author Survived, Days After Pleading Not Guilty: Report

Rushdie was stabbed in neck and abdomen several times on last Friday when he was set to deliver a talk as part of a lecture series after which he was airlifted to a nearby hospital.

Days after being accused of stabbing author Salman Rushdie, the New Jersey man in an interview with New York Post said that he was “surprised” that the author survived the attack, reported news agency AFP. "When I heard he survived, I was surprised, I guess," Hadi Matar, 24, told the tabloid, which said they held a video interview with the jailed suspect, as per the AFP report. 

The suspected assailant who pleaded not guilty to the attempted murder charges did not answer whether he was  he was inspired by the 1989 edict, or fatwa, issued under Iran's former supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeii, that ordered Muslims to kill the writer for what he deemed the blasphemous nature of the book "The Satanic Verses."

"I respect the ayatollah. I think he's a great person. That's as far as I will say about that,” Matar said. 

As per the report, Matar told during the interview that he had “read a couple of pages” of Rushdie’s book. 

"I don't like the person. I don't think he's a very good person," he said of the author. "I don't like him. I don't like him very much."

"He's someone who attacked Islam, he attacked their beliefs, the belief systems."

The suspect said that he was not in contact with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and added that he learned about Rushdie’s lecture at Chautauqua Institution's literary series via a tweet earlier this year.

He told the Post he had taken a bus to Buffalo one day prior to the attack, before taking a Lyft to Chautauqua.

"I was hanging around pretty much. Not doing anything in particular, just walking around," he told the paper. "I was just outside the whole time."

In his interview, Matar said that he had watched YouTube videos of Rushdie speaking and called the author “disingenuous”.

Rushdie was stabbed in neck and abdomen several times on last Friday when he was set to deliver a talk as part of a lecture series after which he was airlifted to a nearby hospital and underwent emergency surgery for life threatening injuries. 

The 75-year-old's condition remains serious but he was taken off a ventilator, and has shown signs of improvement.