In the year 2011, at the beginning of the Syrian Revolution, it was reported that dissidents were chopped alive in the Al-Shamandar Sugar Factory at Jisr al-Shughour. 
The following is testimony from a defector photographer:
“We received news that the sugar factory at Jisr Al-Shughour served as a detention and torture as well. This was reported on ‘Al-Jazeera’ and ‘Arabic’ News and it was partly our job to deny bad news that came out is Syria to these two stations.
When we arrived at the entrance to the factory we found dozens of women sitting on the ground, some of them weeping, some of whom were praying to God, praying against the health of Bashar and the health of his children
Some of these women were carrying babies, and the detainees were either a mother or activist brother, father or sister who had been picked up by the regime and taken into custody.
On the other side of the factory we saw, dozens of men and youth in tragic conditions, with bloody faces and bodies, with some trying to hide the wounds of their head and face ..
I went out of the factory after taking many photographs for documentation purposes, and stood by the front door to breathe fresh air after almost suffocating from the lying, hypocrisy, silence and falsifying facts about what was going on here with all the torture behind this sugar factory facade.
At the door, I met the factory guard who looked at me angrily and said in a threatening voice, ‘Do you not fear God, do you not have a mother, sister, or brother who fears the regime? Yesterday the Shabiha and soldiers came to rape women and forced them to remain naked’.
And what was most shocking of all was what he told me next:
‘Why did you not come yesterday to photograph as the men were being thrown in the grill that turns their bodies into small pieces as well as sugar … and all of them go to the mills to melt in with the sugar’. Assad and his gang of criminals was chopping the bodies alive of dissident men and boys to mix with the sugar.
I did not dare answer, I took my bag with my camera and went home to my house. The next day I went back to the factory and asked about the guard and was told that he had fled”.
This account was told by a Syrian defector photographer and reported here by a correspondent who must remain anonymous in order to protect his identity.
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