Syrian security forces break hands of political cartoonist Ali Ferzat
by Elizabeth Flock
Washington Post
August 25, 2011
Renowned Syrian political cartoonist Ali Ferzat was kidnapped, badly beaten, and left bleeding on the side of the road in an attack Thursday blamed on the security forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Ferzat had once had high hopes for Assad as leader, having been visited long ago by the aspiring opthamologist, who told the cartoonist all his work should be published “” even cartoons banned in the country, the Guardian reports.
But in recent years, Ferzat, now 60 and based in Damascus, had increasingly criticized not only the bureaucracy and corruption in Assad”™s regime but also his brutal crackdown on protesters.
