SALMAN RUSHDIE - RUSHDIE SEEKS POLICE PROTECTION

RUSHDIE SEEKS POLICE PROTECTION

LATEST: Author SALMAN RUSHDIE has asked for police protection after an Iranian group reportedly put an GBP80,000 ($160,000) bounty on his head. The Organisation to Commemorate the Martyrs of the Muslim World has offered to pay the sum to anyone "who was able to execute the apostate Salman Rushdie". The group is angry Rushdie was knighted in British monarch Queen Elizabeth II's Honours List on Saturday (16Jun07). The Iranian and Pakistani parliaments have both condemned the honour for 'making a mockery out of Muslims'. Iran took offence to Rushdie's Muslim references in controversial 1988 work The Satanic Verses, and issued a fatwa against him a year later.