Rushdie wins apology from ex-policeman

AUTHOR Salman Rushdie received an apology in court yesterday from a former policeman who libelled him in a book about his time in hiding under a fatwa threat.

Rushdie said Ron Evans, an ex-police driver who guarded him after Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a call for his death over the novel The Satanic Verses in 1989, had penned surrealist untruths about him.

The false claims made by Evans in the book On Her Majesty’s Service included that Rushdie had bad relations with his police protection team and that they once locked him in a room after he irritated them.