Police Scotland drop probe into JK Rowling death threat sent in wake of Salman Rushdie ‘murder bid’
COPS will take no further action against a Twitter user who sent a threatening message to author JK Rowling after it emerged the culprit lives outside the UK.
Police Scotland officers launched an investigation after the Harry Potter writer was sent a chilling Tweet in the wake of the attack on Salman Rushdie last month.
Rushdie was stabbed in the neck while on stage at an event in New York state last month.
His alleged attacker stormed the stage while the novelist was giving a speech at the Chautauqua Institution.
Rowling was warned “you are next” after she voiced her support of her fellow author on Twitter.
Now a probe into the threat has been completed and cops have said there will be no further action “at this time”.
In the aftermath of the attack on Rushdie, Rowling said: “Horrifying news. Feeling very sick right now. Let him be OK.”
A Twitter user under the name Meer Asif Asiz replied: “Don’t worry you are next.”
Rowling shared screenshots of the threat and thanked everyone who had sent supportive messages. “Police are involved (were already involved on other threats),” she wrote.
But a Police Scotland spokeswoman said: “Following a report made to police on Saturday, 13 August, 2022 regarding an online threat, enquiries have been carried out into this matter and it has been established that it was made outwith the UK.
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“Enquiries are now complete and there is no further police action at this time.”
In an interview with Graham Norton following the threat Rowling admitted she now has a “love-hate relationship” with it and said she once went about a year off Twitter and finally returned only in connection to a children’s book she was writing.
She said social media “can be a lot of fun” but “there’s no doubt that social media is a gift for people who want to behave in a malign way”.
Rowling, 57, also called on Twitter to take action following the threat, but Twitter said there were “no violations” of its rules.
Rowling, who has voiced her support for female-only spaces, has been accused of transphobia, which she denies.
Her address was made public by activists after she “spoke up for women’s sex-based rights”, she revealed last November.
At the same time, she said she had “received so many death threats I could paper the house with them”.
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