UPDATED BELOW 

Seems like we just cannot trust this guy about anything.  Now he wants a do over on his trial, because despite his announcements to the contrary, he isn’t really guilty:

Moussaoui asks for new trial

Less than a week after he was jailed for life over the September 11 attacks, Al-Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui submitted a motion asking to withdraw his guilty plea so he can have a new trial.

"Moussaoui wishes to withdraw his guilty plea because when he entered the plea his ‘understanding of the American legal system was completely flawed’," his lawyers said in the motion. 

Translation:  I didn’t think I would lose even though I said i was guilty. 

 Moussaoui said in an affadavit "I now see that it is possible that I can receive a fair trial" in the United States.

Um, you already did.  Had it been unfair, you would be swinging from a rope now.

"Even with Americans as jurors," he went on, "I can have the opportunity 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."

Despite the fact I said I was and said I did.

"I wish to withdraw my guilty plea and ask the court for a new trial to prove my innocence of the September 11 plot," he said.

A jury rejected prosecutors calls for a death penalty last Wednesday and called for the 37-year-old Frenchman to be jailed for life without chance of parole after he admitted six charges of conspiracy over the September 11 attacks.

Moussaoui decided on Friday, while waiting to be transferred to a super-maximum security prison in Colorado, that he wanted to change his plea, his lawyers said in documents submitted to a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, where his trial was held.

Translation:  I didn’t think I would lose even though I said i was guilty. 

 Moussaoui said in an affadavit "I now see that it is possible that I can receive a fair trial" in the United States.

Um, you already did.  Had it been unfair, you would be swinging from a rope now.

"Even with Americans as jurors," he went on, "I can have the opportunity 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."

Despite the fact I said I was and said I did.

"I wish to withdraw my guilty plea and ask the court for a new trial to prove my innocence of the September 11 plot," he said.

A jury rejected prosecutors calls for a death penalty last Wednesday and called for the 37-year-old Frenchman to be jailed for life without chance of parole after he admitted six charges of conspiracy over the September 11 attacks.

Moussaoui decided on Friday, while waiting to be transferred to a super-maximum security prison in Colorado, that he wanted to change his plea, his lawyers said in documents submitted to a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, where his trial was held.

Look, he had representation and every opportunity to defend his innocence during the months of his trial.  Now that reality has set in, his smug attitude and superiority is having to contend with the reality of life without parole in a Supermax prison.  Suddenly it isn’t fun any more and he wants a recount.

The sad thing is that knowing our bleeding heart judicial system, he will likely get it, if not outright, then on appeal.

Good thing he is not in the 9th Circuit Court’s Jurisdiction.  If he was, it would be a nobrainer.

Bryan at Hot Air makes a good point:

One thing these terrorists have been trained to do–and yes, in spite of his odd after-last-minute change of heart, Moussaoui is a terrorist trained by al Qaeda–is game the Western media and legal system. They’re trained to lie about what happens to them in prison in order to gain the sympathy of the likes of the ACLU and Amnesty International, which then write up scathing reports that fuel bogus stories about Koran flushing in Newsweek, and the terrorists are trained to use whatever means they can find to mess with the courts including using their lawyers to shuttle messages in and out of prison. Right, Lynne Stewart? So today’s retraction is probably just another terrorist gambit. And for that reason, it may gain some traction.

Indeed, they do understand how to manipulate our system as good as we do.

Which leads us to the real point, also from Bryan at Hot Air:

By the way, Moussaoui has just become the poster boy for handling all terrorist cases via military tribunals. Civilian courts just aren’t the proper venue for dealing with war criminals. Not that anyone in Washington has the spine to make that argument now.

I couldn’t have said it better.

Links:  Stop the ACLU, Donkey Stomp, The Sandbox, Hillbilly White Trash, Iowa Voice, Jawa Report, American Conservative Daily, Right Voices, The Indepundit, Outside the Beltway, Wizbang

UPDATE (from The Sandbox):

The Court has ruled.

Nice try, but no.

Judge denies Moussaoui effort to withdraw plea

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A judge on Monday denied a request to withdraw his guilty plea by Zacarias Moussaoui, who was sentenced last week to life in prison for conspiracy in connection with the September 11 attacks.

Moussaoui had asked District Judge Leonie Brinkema to allow him to withdraw his plea and said he lied when he testified that he was meant to be part of the hijacking plot.

But Brinkema issued an order denying the request based on a federal rule that prohibits a defendant from withdrawing a guilty plea after he is sentenced.

Good.  Thank God.  Even if it was on the basis of a technicality, I don’t care.  I want him to see the looming walls of his new permanent home coming closer and closer.

On a side note good thing he isn’t in the jurisdiction of the 9th Circuit Circus Court.  He’d be walking free about now.

"Because defendant was sentenced on May 4, 2006, his motion is too late and must be denied on this basis only," Brinkema wrote in her order.

Moussaoui, 37, said in an affidavit filed with the motion that he had pleaded guilty against the advice of his lawyers because his understanding of the U.S. legal system was "completely flawed."

"Because I now see that it is possible that I can receive a fair trial, even with Americans as jurors, and that I can have the opportunity 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," he said in the affidavit.

You had your trial, you had your chance.  Time to own it.

Last week a jury of nine men and three women decided that Moussaoui, the only person charged in a U.S. court for the hijacked airliner attacks, should go to prison for life rather than be executed.

Moussaoui’s court-appointed lawyers — who rarely speak to their client — said in a footnote that they knew of the rule prohibiting withdrawal of a guilty plea but filed the motion anyway "given their problematic relationship with Moussaoui."

Over the past four years, Moussaoui tried several times to fire his lawyers and said they were part of a conspiracy to kill him.

When Moussaoui pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy in April 2005, he said he was an al Qaeda operative and was supposed to be a part of a second wave of hijackings.

But the Frenchman of Moroccan descent, who was arrested three weeks before the September 11 attacks, changed his story when he testified during his two-month sentencing trial. He said he was supposed to have piloted a fifth plane into the White House on September 11.

In the affidavit, Moussaoui said he had lied when he testified in court.

Of course.  Lie now, lie then, how can you tell?

And this is just aawful, can’t anyone tell the truth any more?

Judge?  Can we give him an extra 100 years for perjury?

"I have never met Mohamed Atta and, while I may have seen a few of the other hijackers at the guest house, I never knew them or anything about their operation," he said. During his testimony, Moussaoui said he knew or recognized most of the September 11 hijackers — some from when he worked at an al Qaeda guest house in Afghanistan.

Moussaoui said he was "extremely surprised" when the jury did not return a verdict of death.

Surprised isn’t the word I would have used.

"I had thought that I would be sentenced to death based on the emotions and anger toward me for the deaths on September 11," he said.

And some say you should have.  You might want to be happy with what you got.

I find it very hard to track the logic here.  "I figured I could not get a fair trial and I would be sentenced to die, so I pled guilty and expected to die and waved my middle finger at the whole country.  But when I just got life, I decided I want to try a to defend myself after all"?

He is, apparently, not just rotton, but stupid.

Of course he may not be considering the fact that if the legal system granted his request, they would have a second chance to fry him too.

Wizbang said it best:

Unfortunately, he’ll have his entire life to play games like this with the American judicial system.

Yep.  But he can do it from the Supermax.