(Radio Free Europe) An Iranian foundation close to the country’s Islamic government has praised the man who is accused of violently attacking novelist Salman Rushdie last year, leaving the writer severely injured, and said it was offering him a reward of farmland.
The Foundation to Implement Imam Khomeini’s Fatwas, according to local Iranian media on February 21, made the offer to 24-year-old Hadi Matar, a Shi’ite Muslim American from New Jersey who is accused of jumping on stage last year to attack Rushdie during a literary event held at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York state.
The attack, which left Rushdie blind in one eye and without the use of one hand, was “the brave act of a young American trying to carry out a historic verdict,” the foundation said.
