LONDON: Rishi Sunak, one of two candidates seeking to become Britain’s next Prime Minister, said Friday’s attack on author Salman Rushdie should serve as a wake-up call to the West over Iran.
Indian-born author Rushdie, who spent years in hiding after Iran urged Muslims to kill him over his novel “The Satanic Verses,” was stabbed in the neck and torso on stage at a lecture in New York state. After hours of surgery, Rushdie was on a ventilator and unable to speak as of Friday evening. There has been no official government reaction in Iran to the attack on Rushdie, but several hard-line Iranian newspapers praised his assailant. “The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie should be a wake-up call for the West, and Iran’s reaction to the attack strengthens the case for proscribing the IRGC” Sunak, the former finance minister, said, according to the paper. –Agencies
