Norway Offers Reward for Information in Assassination Attempt Against Publisher
The Norwegian government has offered 500,000 Krone ($71,581.95) reward for new information to help the police solve the attempted murder in 1993 of William Nygaard, who published the Norwegian edition of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Nygaard was shot and seriously injured, but the assassin was never brought to justice. The Guardian reports:
Nygaard, CEO of one of Norway's largest publishing houses, Aschehoug, was shot three times and seriously injured outside his house in Oslo on 11 October 1993. The attack came four years after the fatwa issued against Rushdie by the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, calling for the murder of him and his publishers because the book was deemed blasphemous in its portrayal of Muhammad. Rushdie was forced into hiding; in 1991 the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, Hitoshi Igarashi, was murdered, and the Italian translator, Ettore Caprioli, was also attacked. Neither of those cases, nor that of Nygaard, has been solved.
Kripos, which is Norway's special investigation unit, has reopened the case after a book by journalist Odd Isungset came out. The book, Who Shot William Nygaard?, alleges that the original investigation was mishandled and lays out a compelling case for accusing an Iranian national who later fled the country. The reward is being offered jointly by the government and the
Norwegian Publishers Association, which has expressed fury at the way the investigation was dropped.
