Sir Salman Rushdie had two police officers guarding him but it was crowd who tackled the knifeman after he was repeatedly stabbed, witnesses claim.
The 75-year-old has been taken off his ventilator and is talking as he recovers from being stabbed in the US.
British-American writer Aatish Taseer said, in a since-deleted tweet, that he was "off the ventilator and talking (and joking)", which was then confirmed by the author's agent Andrew Wylie.
Mr Wylie had earlier said Sir Salman was using the ventilator and could lose an eye after he sustained injuries to his arm and liver in the attack.
The Indian-born Briton, whose novel The Satanic Verses led to death threats from Iran in the 1980s, was about to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution, 65 miles from Buffalo in New York state, when he was attacked.
Now it has been claimed Sir Salman had two police officers assigned to protect him - but he was tackled to the ground by the crowd instead.
Witness Dr Martin Haskell told Mail Online : “The audience subdued the assailant and the state patrolmen quickly then handcuffed him.”
Dr Haskell said Rushdie had both the state trooper and another sheriff's deputy nearby acting as security for the event.
Despite this, the knife-wielding assailant still seemed to run onto the stage unobstructed.
It's unclear where the officers were standing when the stabbing occurred.
A spokesman for the New York State Police said the trooper and deputy were assigned “to provide security at the event at the request of the Chautauqua Institution”.
The man accused of stabbing him pleaded not guilty on Saturday to charges of attempted murder and assault, in what a prosecutor called a "pre-planned" crime.
A lawyer for Hadi Matar, 24, entered the plea on his behalf during a formal hearing at a court in western New York.
Matar appeared in court wearing a black and white jumpsuit and a white face mask, with his hands cuffed in front of him.
A judge ordered him to be held without bail after district attorney Jason Schmidt told her Matar took steps to purposely put himself in a position to harm Sir Salman, getting an advance pass to the event where the author was speaking and arriving a day early with a fake ID.
"This was a targeted, unprovoked, pre-planned attack on Mr Rushdie," Mr Schmidt said.
Public defender Nathaniel Barone said the authorities had taken too long to get Matar in front of a judge, while leaving him "hooked up to a bench at the state police barracks".
"He has that constitutional right of presumed innocence," Mr Barone added.
Sir Salman was stabbed at least once in the neck and once in the abdomen, according to police, before he was taken to hospital.
His publisher Penguin Random House said they were "deeply shocked and appalled" by the incident.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was "appalled that Sir Salman Rushdie has been stabbed while exercising a right we should never cease to defend".
He added: "Right now my thoughts are with his loved ones. We are all hoping he is okay."
Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer said: "Salman Rushdie has long embodied the struggle for liberty and freedom against those who seek to destroy them.
"This cowardly attack on him yesterday is an attack on those values. The whole Labour Party is praying for his full recovery."
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said: "Today, the country and the world witnessed a reprehensible attack against the writer Salman Rushdie. This act of violence is appalling.
"All of us in the Biden-Harris administration are praying for his speedy recovery. We are thankful to good citizens and first responders for helping Mr Rushdie so quickly after the attack and to law enforcement for its swift and effective work, which is ongoing."
Sir Salman began his writing career in the early 1970s with two unsuccessful books before Midnight's Children, about the birth of India, which won the Booker Prize in 1981.
The author lived in hiding for many years in London under a British government protection programme after the fatwa.
In 1998, the Iranian government withdrew its support for the death sentence and Sir Salman gradually returned to public life, even appearing as himself in the 2001 film Bridget Jones's Diary.
The Index on Censorship, an organisation promoting free expression, said money was raised to boost the reward for Sir Salman's killing as recently as 2016, underscoring that the fatwa still stands.
He was knighted in 2008 and earlier this year was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour as part of the Queen's Birthday Honours.
