Moussaoui now says he is innocent

Convicted September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui says he lied on the witness stand about being involved in the terrorist plot and wants to withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial. The judge turned him down.

US District Judge Leonie Brinkema denied Moussaoui’s request yesterday afternoon, saying the motion was “too late” under federal rules.

Moussaoui said he was “extremely surprised” that he was sentenced to life in prison instead of execution and now believes he can get a fair trial from an American jury.

In a motion filed yesterday, Moussaoui said he testified on March 27 that he was supposed to hijack a fifth plane on September 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House “even though I knew that was a complete fabrication”.

A federal court jury spared the 37-year-old Frenchman the death penalty last Wednesday. On Thursday, Brinkema gave him six life sentences, to run as two consecutive life terms, in the federal supermax prison at Florence, Colorado.

As she handed down the sentence, Brinkema told Moussaoui that he could appeal the life term but that she doubted he would win. “I believe it would be an act of futility,” she said.

The judge also pointed out that, although he could appeal the sentence, he had lost his right to appeal his conviction when he pled guilty in April 2005. “You waived that right,” she said.

Explaining his latest reversal, Moussaoui said in an affidavit: “I had thought I would be sentenced to death based on the emotions and anger toward me for the deaths on September 11.

"But after reviewing the jury verdict and reading how the jurors set aside their emotions and disgust for me and focused on the law and the evidence … I now see that it is possible that I can receive a fair trial even with Americans as jurors.”

Moussaoui’s court-appointed lawyers told the court that they filed the motion even though a federal rule ”prohibits a defendant from withdrawing a guilty plea after imposition of sentence”.

They did so anyway, they said, because of their “problematic relationship with Moussaoui” and the fact that new lawyers have yet to be appointed to replace them.

In a three-page affidavit, Moussaoui cited his new opinion of American jurors and wrote that he now believes he has a fair chance “to prove that I did not have any knowledge of and was not a member of the plot to hijack planes and crash them into buildings on September 11, 2001”.

“I wish to withdraw my guilty plea and ask the court for a new trial to prove my innocence of the September 11 plot,” Moussaoui wrote.

“I have never met (lead 9/11 hijacker) Mohammed Atta and, while I may have seen a few of the other hijackers … (in Afghanistan), I never knew them or anything about their operation.”

Explaining his twists and turns, Moussaoui said: ”Solitary confinement made me hostile toward everyone, and I began taking extreme positions to fight the system.”

Moussaoui said that this, coupled with his inability to get a Muslim lawyer, led him to distrust his lawyers when they told him he could be convicted of being an al-Qaida member but acquitted of involvement in 9/11.

Moussaoui wrote that he pleaded guilty because he mistakenly thought the Supreme Court would immediately review his objection to being denied the opportunity to call captured enemy combatant witnesses to buttress his claim of not being involved in the 9/11 plot.