Agence France-Presse reported that Hadi Matar, the attacker of Salman Rushdie, was officially accused by the United States of committing a terrorist act on behalf of Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group supported by the Iranian regime.
On Thursday, July 25, this news agency wrote: The attacker of Salman Rushdie was accused of committing a terrorist act on behalf of Hezbollah.
Agence France-Presse added that according to documents released on Wednesday, the man accused of attempting to kill Salman Rushdie was accused of terrorism on behalf of Hezbollah. This is the first time that the United States has explicitly accused Hezbollah, supported by the Iranian regime, of attacking Rushdie.
Hadi Matar, a 26-year-old American of Lebanese descent, had previously been charged by the state of New York for assault and battery in 2022. According to an indictment dated July 17, which had not been made public until now, he is currently accused by a grand jury of three counts, including attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
The attack on Salman Rushdie was carried out under a decree issued from Tehran
In August 2022, Rushdie was stabbed about 10 times by a knife-wielding attacker at an art gathering in New York state.
The FBI announced in a statement on Wednesday that Hezbollah had endorsed this fatwa [the decree to kill Rushdie].
Merrick B. Garland, United States Attorney General, said in a separate statement: “We allege that in attempting to murder Salman Rushdie in New York in 2022, Hadi Matar committed an act of terrorism in the name of Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization aligned with the Iranian regime.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the suspect attempted to carry out a fatwa endorsed by Hezbollah that called for the death of Salman Rushdie.
It is worth recalling that on February 14, 1989, Ruhollah Khomeini, the then Supreme Leader of Iran’s regime, issued a decree to kill Salman Rushdie. This fatwa remains in effect to this day. The current Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, also declared in 2004 that Khomeini’s decree was irrevocable. Following this fatwa, several governmental organizations in Iran set rewards for killing him.
Thus, it appears that the regime assigned the mission of killing Salman Rushdie to Hezbollah under its command. Hezbollah then attempted to carry out this mission by employing one or more Americans.
