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Bounty on Salman Rushdie’s life increased
An Iranian religious group has increased a reward offered for the murder of British author Salman Rushdie after blaming him for an anti-Islam film. As Rushdie recounts in his new autobiography, in 1989 Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned him to death for insulting the prophet in his novel The Satanic Verses. Rushdie has no links to the film — which has caused riots across the Middle East— he dismissed it as ‘idiotic’, but Ayatollah Hassan Sanei of the 15 Khordad Foundation said the film would never have been released had Rushdie been killed after the fatwa was declared. Sanei increased the reward by $500,000 USD, making the total sum $3.3million USD.