AP: Salman Rushdie is no longer on a ventilator and can speak

A writer stabbed in the neck and stomach during a lecture in the United States on Friday Salman Rushdie no longer needs a ventilator and is able to speak, reports AP news agency.

Rushdie’s colleague Aatish Taseer reported on Twitter local time Saturday night that Rushdie is “off the ventilator and able to talk and joke.” According to the AP news agency, Rushdie’s agent Andrew Wylie has confirmed the information without saying more about it.

Rushdie is still being treated in hospital for serious injuries.

Previously, Wylie said that the author will probably lose one of his eyes. In addition, the nerves in his arm and his liver were damaged in the attack.

Rushdie, 75, had taken the stage to give a talk at a literary festival in New York state when a man rushed the stage and stabbed the author. The attacker was arrested immediately.

The suspect, a 24-year-old man living in New Jersey, pleaded not guilty through his lawyer Saturday in the courtroom as charges of attempted second-degree murder and second-degree assault were read to him.

Prosecutor by Jason Schmidt according to which the act was a premeditated crime.

“This was a targeted, unprovoked, premeditated attack on Mr. Rushdie,” Schmidt said.

Criminal investigators are still investigating whether the suspect acted alone.

Rushdie is best known for his novel The Satanic Verses, published in 1988.

In Iran, the book was banned as blasphemy, and Iran’s supreme leader at the time, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a religious opinion or fatwa due to the book. Khomeini issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill Rushdie for blasphemy.

The prosecutor used the doubt about the fatwa as a motive for the act, when he argued against a possible bail amount in the indictment.

– Even if this court sets the bail amount at one million dollars, there is a risk that the bail amount will be paid, Schmidt said.