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STORY: Police identified the suspect as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from Fairview, New Jersey, who bought a pass to the event at which Rushdie was due to speak.

Rushdie, 75, was being introduced to give a talk to an audience of hundreds on artistic freedom at western New York's Chautauqua Institution when a man rushed to the stage and lunged at the novelist, who has lived with a bounty on his head since the late 1980s. Stunned attendees helped wrest the man from Rushdie, who had fallen to the floor. A New York State Police trooper providing security at the event arrested the attacker

He was stabbed in the neck and torso and airlifted to a hospital, police said. After hours of surgery, Rushdie was on a ventilator and unable to speak. The attack has been condemned by writers and politicians around the world as an assault on the freedom of expression.