Assad joke cartoonist kidnapped and beaten

Masked gunmen dragged Syria’s best-known political cartoonist from his car before dawn, beat him and broke both his hands as a warning to stop drawing just days after he compared Syria’s president to Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, a relative and activists said.

Now in hospital with serious injuries, 60-year-old Ali Ferzat has become the most famous victim of the repression of Syria’s five-month uprising against president Bashar al-Assad.

“This is just a warning,” the gunmen told Mr Ferzat, according to a relative who asked that her name not be used for fear of reprisals. “We will break your hands so that you’ll stop drawing.”

The men then singed the artist’s beard, put a bag over his head and dumped him by the side of the road.

The popular cartoonist, who works late into the night, left his studio at 4am yesterday, the relative and several activists said.

An SUV with tinted windows soon started trailing him and cut him off on a Damascus street. Four masked gunmen dragged him from his car, bundled him into the SUV and drove him to the airport road just outside Damascus, beating him and making threats.

After news of the attack broke, online social networking sites exploded with angry postings.

“Assad’s Syria is the burial ground of talent,” read one tweet.

“Ali Ferzat, your innovation will stand in the face of their cowardice and hate,” wrote Suheir Atassi, a Syrian pro-democracy activist.

Human rights groups said Mr Assad’s forces have killed more than 2,000 people since the uprising against his rule erupted in mid-March, touched off by the Arab spring revolts.