Death threat returns to haunt Rushdie

Fifteen years after the late Ayatollah Khomeini called for Salman Rushdie to be put to death, and more than six years after the threat the threat against the author of The Satanic Verses seemed to have gone away forever, the fatwa is back.

It was reaffirmed by Iran's spiritual leader in a message to Muslim pilgrims.

According to the Iranian media, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, told pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that Rushdie was an apostate whose killing would be authorised by Islam.

However senior British officials said that the Iranian government had not changed its position since 1998 when it dissociated itself from the fatwa, which had originally led to Rushdie spending years of his life in hiding because of the alleged blasphemy in The Satanic Verses.

According to the officials, because the fatwa was issued in February 1989 by Iran's revolutionary founder and Khamenei's predecessor Ayatollah Khomeini, who had since died, it would always remain in existence. "The key thing from our point of view is that the Iranian government formally withdrew their support for the fatwa on Salman Rushdie in 1998 which is when Britain and Iran formally upgraded their relationship to the level of ambassador," said the Foreign Office.

"The original fatwa was issued by Ayatollah Khomeini shortly before he died. It can only be rescinded by the man who issued it or a higher authority so in practice it will hold indefinitely.

"Almost every time that the current supreme leader, Ayatollah

Khamenei, gives a sermon he mentions Salman Rushdie in these terms and denounces him as a man who has insulted the name of the prophet and who can therefore be killed. It's just the standard rhetoric."

The Foreign Office added: "The crucial thing is that the fatwa is no longer endorsed by the Iranian government because before 1998 what we had was effectively a statesponsored death sentence."

The reaffirmation of the fatwa - which came when Khamenei was speaking in his capacity as a spiritual leader rather than a leader in matters of state - comes at a time when relations between Britain and Iran are already tense because of Iran's nuclear programme.

However the Foreign Office said this did not mean they were likely to get any worse. "This should not be taken as a new development."

Scotland Yard's Special Branch, responsible for protecting Rushdie, who lives in New York, was not prepared to comment.