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Alleged 9/11 Mastermind To Obama: US 'Dictators In Our Land' Started War 

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WASHINGTON (CBSMiami) – In a newly surfaced letter from the alleged mastermind behind 9/11 to former President Barack Obama, the Guantanamo Bay detainee says the U.S. brought the 2011 attack on itself.

CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald broke the story Wednesday, publishing Khalid Sheik Mohammed's 18-page letter on their website.

"It was not we who started the war against you in 9/11. It was you and your dictators in our land," Mohammed, 51, wrote in the letter.

Though the letter was dated January 2015, it only reached the White House a few days before Obama left office after a military judge ordered its delivery.

Prison officials at the Guantanamo Bay facility, where Mohammed was being detained, had refused to pass along the letter because it could be considered propaganda.

Mohammed addressed the letter to Obama, calling him "the head of the snake" and president of "the country of oppression and tyranny."

One section read, "Why did 9/11 happen? And Why May it Happen Again?"

"The war crimes perpetrated in Palestine since 1948, and those taking place in Gaza today, are the clearest indication of why 9/11 happened, and why it may happen against in the future," he wrote as an answer in the letter.

Mohammed has been held at the prison at Guantanamo Bay since 2006 after being captured in Pakistan in 2003.

The 51-year-old, who was subjected to some of the CIA's harshest interrogation methods, confessed to being the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks during an interrogation in 2007.

"I will be happy to be alone in my cell to worship Allah the rest of my life and repent to Him all my sins and misdeeds," he wrote in the letter. "And if your court sentences me to death, I will be even happier to meet Allah and the prophets and see my best friends whom you killed unjustly all around the world and to see sheik Osama bin Laden."

Mohammad is awaiting his death-penalty trial at Guantanamo Bay.

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