Ali Ferzat Live Blog

This picture is said to be a self portrait by Ali Ferzat, a Syrian cartoonist who was beaten by masked gunmen earlier this week. Some reports online say it is fake, which is likey, as Farzat's brother told Al Jazeera that the cartoonists hands had been broken.

Rime Allaf, a Syrian analyst and writer tweeted, "it may have been a fake, but the fact it spread like wildfire online shows how many thought it was the appropriate response". 

Tweeted by @KareemLailah

US accuses Syria if brutalizing peaceful protesters after attack on Ali Ferzat, as activist report more deaths.

US state department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement following Ferzat's attack: "The regime's thugs focused their attention on Ferzat's hands, beating them furiously and breaking one of them, a clear message that he should stop drawing."

In her statement, Nuland said: "Many other moderate activists who oppose violence have been jailed for speaking out against the regime.

Read the full article here.

Ali Ferzat was attacked after he left his studio early Thursday and was beaten by masked gunmen who broke his hands and dumped him on a road outside Damascus airport.

Ferzat drew cartoons about the uprising and posted the illustrations on his private website, providing comic relief to many Syrians who were unable to follow his work in local newspapers because of a ban on his drawings.

Masked gunmen dragged Syria's best-known political cartoonist from his car before dawn on Thursday, beat him severely and broke both his hands as a warning to stop drawing just days after he compared Syria's president to Moammar Gadhafi, a relative and activists said.

Taken to hospital with serious injuries, 60-year-old Ali Ferzat has become the most famous victim of the repression of Syria's five-month uprising.

"This is just a warning," the gunmen told 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 on the side of the road.