Saad Bedrie Hussein, who is HIV positive and has a history of mental health issues, told authorities that he admired Obama and that he sent the letter, which included his picture, a ticket to Obama’s party in Chicago’s Grant Park and six index cards with red stains, to see if he could secure tickets to the inauguration.

In an affidavit by a U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigator, the man admitted that he “purposely cut one of his fingers with a razor so he could bleed on the letter.”

The letter was written in an Ethiopian language and was postmarked Dec. 27. It was sent to Obama at the Illinois Department of Aging and was opened a couple of days later by an employee, who also found an orange powder in the note. Tests later determined that the powder was a drink mix.

While Hussein told investigators that he didn’t send any other letters, the state’s Department of Revenue told the investigator about two similar letters, one addressed to the Illinois Department on Aging, the other to “Emanuel,” presumably Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, reports the news service.

The complaint filed against Hussein accuses him of “knowingly” mailing the infected letters “with the intent to kill or injure another.” A federal judge ordered that Hussein undergo a mental evaluation in January. “There is reasonable cause to believe [Hussein] may … be suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering him mentally incompetent [and] unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him.”

This isn’t the suspect’s first run-in with the law. He was arrested in 2006 for setting a fire in the middle of a Chicago street and yelling, “Allah is great” in Arabic while flailing a Quran.