Ali Ferzat
Last year masked men believed to be acting for Syria's security police - attacked Ali Ferzat in what he describes as one of the most secure parts of Damascus.
"I was beaten here, here and here," he gestures. "My arms were black from the beating."
Now Ali is an artist - not a terrorist - but he posed a danger to the regime because his style changed from a general ridicule of the political system in Syria - to specific caricatures of President Bashar al-Assad and his circle.
Which they didn't take kindly too - so lo and behold he was beaten like a dog and left for dead at the side of a road.
"I started to get personal," he explains. "Before, I made sure not to draw any official that could be recognised, even though my cartoons were based on real people. And even if someone in power felt they were being targeted, they wouldn't say anything, because that would be like confirming it really was them."
Ali was allowed to start his own satirical magazine - the first independent paper to be licensed for decades - but he soon ran into trouble with the security services.
And although the magazine was soon closed down because of its popularity - the cartoonist continued with his mockery of state repression - in the state newspaper, Tishreen.
Since his terrible beating, Ali has remained outside Syria - and for some time he was unable to draw - although his spirit was unboken.
"What I want to tell people who say they are afraid of what may now happen in Syria is that there is no such thing as a sanitised revolution," he says.
"Everything that has been done to the country - however negative - will have to come to the surface in order for us to deal with what has been done to us over the past 50 years.
"Things will have to take their course, but that is not a reason to be afraid."
