An Iranian religious foundation has upped its reward for killing Salman Rushdie, Hassan Sanei, the foundation's head, in a statement reported by the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) said, "I am adding another $500,000 to the reward for killing Salman Rushdie, and anyone who carries out this sentence will receive the whole amount immediately."
The reward offered by the state-linked foundation now stands at $3.3 million, according to the report.
Sanei, who is also the foundation's representative to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said, "Surely if the sentence of the Imam (Khomeini) had been carried out, the later insults in the form of caricatures, articles and the making of movies would not have occurred."
Rushdie, appearing on British radio before the news of the bounty increase, called the film "idiotic ... a piece of garbage" but also condemned mob violence against it as "an ugly reaction that needs to be named as such".