Salman Rushdie September 2012. Joseph Anton was Rushdie's secret alias. In February 1997, Ayatollah Hasan Sane'i, leader of the bonyad panzdah-e khordad (Fifteenth of Khordad Foundation), reported that the blood money offered by the foundation for the assassination of Rushdie would be increased from $2 million to $2.5 million. Then a semi-official religious foundation in Iran increased the reward it had offered for the killing of Rushdie from $2.8 million to $3.3 million. In November 2015, former Indian minister P. Chidambaram acknowledged that banning "The Satanic Verses" was wrong. In 1998, Iran's former president Mohammad Khatami proclaimed the fatwa “finished”; but it
Knighthood of Salman Rushdie terrorism", and that "if someone committed a suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Mohammad, his act was justified." He called on all Muslim governments to break ties with Britain and warned that "This is an occasion for the [world's] 1.5 billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision. If Muslims do not unite, the situation will get worse and Salman Rushdie may get a seat in the British parliament." When asked about his comments about suicide bombing later Haq stated that he "did not mean such attacks would be justified but was merely saying militants