Bombs Damage 2 Bookstores; Link to Rushdie Seen
Firebombs damaged two bookstores in attacks that may be connected with the controversy over Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses,” Scotland Yard announced Tuesday.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said police discovered a fire and a broken window at Dillon’s University Bookshop in London’s West End late Sunday.
Another fire began at Collett’s Bookshop on Charing Cross Road about one minute later, shortly after a witness saw two men in the shop doorway.
“The shop is very badly damaged . . . ,” said Monica Wanninger, store manager of Collett’s, which sells exclusively the books of Rushdie’s publisher, Viking Penguin. “We’ll be shut for six to eight weeks.”
Rushdie has been in hiding under police guard since the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s revolutionary leader, said Feb. 14 that he should be killed because his novel has blasphemed the Prophet Mohammed.
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