Salman Rushdie occasion host thought assault was 'unhealthy prank' | World News

The person set to interview Salman Rushdie in New York state moments earlier than the famend novelist was attacked mentioned Sunday he initially thought somebody was enjoying a merciless joke, however was jolted to actuality when he noticed blood.

Henry Reese, president of non-profit group Metropolis of Asylum, was additionally injured when an assailant stormed a literary occasion stage Friday and stabbed Rushdie within the neck and stomach; he mentioned it took a number of moments to know what was going down.

"It was very obscure. It regarded like a kind of unhealthy prank and it did not have any sense of actuality," Reese, 73, informed CNN.

"Then when there was blood behind him, it turned actual."

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Reese, who appeared on the community Sunday with a big bandage over his bruised and swollen proper eye, declined to debate specifics in regards to the assault.

However he mentioned that when a person raced onstage he thought the incident was a "unhealthy reference" to the non secular decree that Iran's leaders had issued calling for Muslims to kill Rushdie, and "not that it was an actual assault."

The suspected assailant, Hadi Matar, 24, was wrestled to the bottom by employees and different viewers members earlier than being taken into police custody.

Rushdie spent years underneath police safety after Iranian leaders referred to as for his killing over his portrayal of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed in his novel "The Satanic Verses."

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Reese mentioned he was attributable to talk about with Rushdie the Metropolis of Asylum motion, which seeks to guard freedom of expression and which Reese mentioned he launched after listening to an inspirational Rushdie handle in 1997.

"That's the grim kind of irony -- or perhaps intention -- to not solely assault his physique, however to assault all the pieces that he represented," Reese mentioned.