AP reports:
Stunned that he was sentenced to life in prison rather than execution, Zacarias Moussaoui now believes he could get a fair trial from an American jury. Too late, the judge says.U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema quickly rejected a motion the confessed al-Qaida conspirator filed Monday to withdraw his guilty plea and get a new trial.In his motion, Moussaoui said he lied on the witness stand March 27 when he reversed four years of denials and claimed he was to have hijacked a fifth jetliner on Sept. 11, 2001, and crashed it into the White House, “even though I knew that was a complete fabrication.”The 37-year-old Frenchman blamed his behavior on the effects of solitary confinement, his inability to get a Muslim lawyer and his misunderstanding of the U.S. justice system.—-The motion said Moussaoui told his lawyers he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea because when he entered it his “understanding of the American legal system was completely flawed.”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.
If Moussaoui truly believed that he had “won” – as he gloated after his trial – then he would not be appealing the verdict.
A lifetime in solitary confinement, denied the opportunity to go out “like a martyr.” Moussaoui clearly lost, and – as this report indicates – he knows it.
