William NYGAARD

Following campaigning by PEN Norway and PEN International, publisher William Nygaard’s legal team successfully appealed against the decision to close the investigation into the 1993 attempted murder of Nygaard, with the Norwegian authorities announcing on 24 July 2024 that the investigation would resume.  

In April 2024, PEN International had joined PEN Norway in expressing profound disappointment and concern over the decision by the Oslo District Attorney’s Office to dismiss the case regarding the attempted murder of prominent Norwegian publisher, PEN International vice president, and former president of PEN Norway, William Nygaard. On 11 October 1993, Nygaard, then publishing director at Aschehoug, one of Norway’s largest publishing houses, was shot three times and seriously injured outside his house in Oslo. He spent months in hospital.  

Nygaard quickly linked the shooting with his support for writer Salman Rushdie and Aschehoug’s publication in Norwegian of Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses. Yet it took five years for the Norwegian police to acknowledge a connection between the attempted murder of Nygaard and the fatwa issued in 1989 by Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini against Rushdie, the book, and his publishers. Without anyone being named as a suspect or charged with the attack against Nygaard, the case was dropped in 2007.  

Norway’s special investigation unit, Kripos, reopened the case in 2009 following a 2008 documentary Blodsporene fra Dagaliveien (The Traces of Blood from Dagaliveien) by investigative journalist and author Odd Isungset (who also documented the attack in his 2010 book Hvem skjøt William Nygaard? (Who shot William Nygaard?). In October 2018, two days before the expiration of the statute of limitation, Kripos charged two individuals with Nygaard’s attempted murder. The investigation continued until September 2023, when Kripos submitted the case to the Oslo District Attorney’s Office, suggesting dismissal due to insufficient evidence. PEN Norway notably called for an independent public inquiry into the handling of the Nygaard case by the police. PEN International renewed its call for full justice and accountability for the attack.