Activist: Syrian troops snatch, beat up cartoonist
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Syrian security forces attacked a renowned anti-regime cartoonist early Thursday in Damascus and left him bleeding along the side of a road, human rights activists said.
Ali Farzat, who is in his 60s, was hospitalized after passers-by found him "heavily beaten and physically abused," said Omar Idilbi, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees, an activist group that helps organize and track the 5-month-old uprising in Syria.
Farzat has said he had great hopes for President Bashar Assad when he became president in 2000, but in recent years he has become a vehement critic of the regime, particularly as the military launches a brutal crackdown on the country's protest movement (AP).
