Who is Hadi Matar, the 24-year-old-man who allegedly attacked Salman Rushdie?

Author Salman Rushdie was attacked on Friday, and the police quickly arrested a 24-year-old man. Rushdie, a best-selling author of Indian descent based in the UK, was stabbed on Friday night during a book engagement at Chautauqua Institution in New York. Witnesses reported that the event happened just after the author took his place on stage and was getting ready to be introduced.

The 75-year-old author, who was born in Mumbai, has received death threats from Islamists for writing the book "The Satanic Verses" for many years.

Shortly after its release, the book was outlawed in a number of nations, including India, and the then-Supreme Leader of Iran issued a fatwa condemning Rushdie.




In the audience, Bradley Fisher told Reuters that "a man leaped up on the stage from I don't know where and started what looked like pounding him on the chest, repetitive fist strikes into his chest and neck." The attacker was arrested by police shortly after that. We know the following about him:

Who is Salman Rushdie's attacker?
The alleged attacker has been recognised by police as Hadi Matar. According to the reports, the 24-year-old male is from New Jersey. A law enforcement official with firsthand knowledge of the inquiry told NBC News that Matar's social media posts had initially revealed that he was sympathetic to Shia extremism and the goals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Despite the lack of any connections between Matar and the IRGC, NBC News reports that law enforcement officials discovered pictures of the murdered commander Qassem Solemani and an Iraqi fanatic, who supports the Iranian government, on Matar's cell phone messaging app. Senior Iranian military officer Soleimani was a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.