Alleged 9/11 architect wrote Obama a 'long suppressed' letter blaming America for the attacks

Just days before President Barack Obama left the White House, he received a letter written by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged architect of the 9/11 attacks, The Miami Herald reports. The 18-page letter blamed American foreign policy for provoking the 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people: "It was not we who started the war against you in 9/11. It was you and your dictators in our land," wrote Mohammed from Guantánamo, where he is on trial for his life.

The letter was written in January 2015 but was "long suppressed," The Miami Herald reports, with prison officials deeming it propaganda. In the letter, Mohammed slams Obama for being a "smart attorney, well acquainted with human rights, [who] can kill his enemy without trial and throw his dead body into the sea instead of giving him to his family or respecting him enough as a human being to bury him." Mohammed cites U.S. intervention in Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Hiroshima, and elsewhere as the grounds for the 9/11 attacks.

Mohammed spent over three years in the secret CIA prison network and was waterboarded 183 times. "I will never ask you, or your court, for mercy," Mohammed added. "Do what you wish to do, my freedom, my captivity, and my death is a curse on all evil-doers and tyrants.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The letter was released after Mohammed's defense attorneys argued that Mohammed's right to petition the president was protected by the First Amendment. The judge ruled Obama could see the letter, and that the public could see it one month later, when President Donald Trump was in office.

“What's so troubling to me is it took so long to get approval, even to get this litigated,” said Mohammed's death-penalty attorney David Nevin. Read the full story as well as excerpts from the letter at The Miami Herald.