Price on Salman Rushdie’s Head Might Rise, Iranian Paper Reports

TEHRAN —  A state-run Iranian foundation might increase the $2.5-million bounty on author Salman Rushdie, its leader said in comments published Saturday.

The 15th Khordad Foundation, which last year upped a $2-million bounty to $2.5 million, will consider another increase, the foundation’s leader, Ayatollah Hassan Sanei, was quoted as saying.

“It will be commensurate with the time and place that the sentence is carried out,” the Jomhori Islami newspaper quoted Sanei as saying in a special issue to mark the ninth anniversary of Iran’s fatwa, or religious decree, against Rushdie.

He said that if Rushdie was to be killed in the United States, the price on his head would almost certainly be raised because “all Muslims hate the United States.”

The Indian-born British writer has lived largely in hiding and under the protection of the British government since Iran’s late revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, ordered his death.

In a Feb. 14, 1989, decree, Khomeini said that Rushdie had insulted the prophet Muhammad in his book “The Satanic Verses.”

Iran’s chief prosecutor, Morteza Moqtadaie, renewed the death sentence Friday.

The leader of the foundation setting the bounty was quoted in Saturday’s paper as saying that commitment to killing Rushdie will only grow stronger with time, despite the election of a moderate cleric as Iran’s president last year.

“I think that every day, the issue will become more serious. In the near future, the arrow shot from the bow will hit its target,” Sanei said.

Jomhori Islami marks the anniversary of the fatwa every year with a special issue.