The Execution of Hussam Saraya
22nd September 2025
The Investigative Project on Terrorism
On July 14 at 6:15AM, armed members of the Syrian Security Directorate surrounded the Saraya family home in the predominantly Druze province of Sweida. They began shooting wildly into the house where the large Saraya family members were sleeping including the Saraya brothers, husbands, mothers and wives lived. They were “security forces”— violent jihadists inducted into the armed forces of newly installed President al-Shara, himself a long-time leader of radical Islamic terrorist group who once had a $10 million dollar U.S. bounty on his head for the murder of thousands of innocent civilians including Americans.
In the home at the time was 35-year-old Hussam Saraya, an American from Oklahoma who had returned to Sweida to help his brothers and sister take care of their father, whose health was in serious decline. The security forces dragged the 8 men living on the second floor and handcuffed and blindfolded them. They were led up the street to Tishreen Square where they were machine gunned to death in a horrific manner, captured on video that went viral on social media.
I have been interviewing leaders of the Syrian Druze as well as other religious minorities for the past 5 months who have been subjected to violent mass murder that reached a total of 3,000 Druze in a 7-day period in mid-July. The total number of minorities killed by al-Shara’s forces since taking power is now at least 10,000. They were deliberately slaughtered one by one in what can only be categorized as a true genocide, one that the mainstream media has largely ignored.