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 of this a further "fatwa" should be placed on the life of Mr Rushdie". Officials at the Cabinet Office denied charges that the honours vetting committees had failed to consider the wider implications knighting Rushdie. One Labour MP speaking to reporters off the record noted that a week before Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister the award "reinforces the impression that nobody's in control. Anybody with any common sense would have blocked this." Conservative home affairs spokesman David Davis stated "Whatever you think of the work of Salman Rushdie, freedom of speech is a fundamental freedom in this country. What is