Syrian cartoonist paid price for getting personal

The moment Syrian cartoonist Ali Farzat chose to depict President Bashar al-Assad and his "inner circle" in his drawings, he knew he was courting trouble.   

The 60-year-old, famous across the Arab world and beyond for bitingly satirical works ridiculing corruption, nepotism and narrow-mindedness, had always avoided identifying individuals in his art.   

That was until a few months before the uprising against Assad began last year, at which point Farzat felt the president had gone too far in stifling freedom of expression and crushing dissent. That's when it got personal.   

"I made that shift from using symbols to portraying actual figures, and little by little I began to see my cartoons being carried by protesters," Farzat said, surrounded by his works on display at the Mica Gallery in central London.   

"They became a symbol for them."   

One of his first cartoons portraying Assad -- long a taboo in Syria -- showed the president reluctantly ripping a page off a calendar on Thursday, knowing that Friday would bring another wave of popular protests to the streets of Syria.   

In another, Assad tries to hitch a lift with outgoing Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and a third shows Assad beside a large armchair, unable to sit down because the springs have broken.   

"Even the chair won't accept him any more," Farzat explained with a smile.   

When the revolt against Assad kicked off, Farzat received threatening phone calls and messages, but not even that prepared him for the ferocity of the attack which came in the early hours of Aug. 25 as he left his Damascus studio.   

Three masked men he described as "thugs of Assad" dragged him from his car and beat him with batons before putting him in their own vehicle and continuing the assault.   

"I could hear them saying 'break his hands so they never dare challenge his masters again'," he told Reuters, speaking through an interpreter.   

"They hit me and hit me, on my head, on one hand and then the other and were trying to make sure they broke them.   

"I had concussion and bruises over the whole of my body. My hands were broken so badly that the movement is still limited."   

Dumped on the side of the street, possibly for dead, Farzat was picked up by a stranger and taken to hospital where he recovered. He later left for Kuwait where he has a "residency".   

The attack triggered outrage in Syria, where it was taken as a sign that Assad's government would brook no dissent, even from a man who once knew the president personally.   

Reuters