In Yaroun, where Hadi Matar is thought to have spent several summers, locals are keeping their heads down
he home town of the parents of Salman Rushdie’s would-be assassin is a forbidding place, where Shia Islamic iconography sits among palatial mansions, bullet-pockmarked homes and wary locals, who for now want nothing to do with visitors.
And so it did when the Guardian visited the mayor’s office in the centre of town, looking for directions to Matar’s parents. “I’m not going to talk about this subject,” the mayor responded curtly. “Nobody else here will talk to you about it and I advise you to leave now.” Whether Hezbollah or Iran played a role in directing Matar to allegedly stab the writer, or whether he felt empowered to do so by the 33-year-old fatwa, is the subject of contention across the region. Iranian state media on Monday disavowed any direct link but claimed Rushdie had deserved to be assaulted because of his book The Satanic Verses, in which some say he described the prophet Muhammad in blasphemous terms.
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