LOS ANGELES (AP) — Former Symbionese Liberation Army fugitive Sara Jane Olson has asked a judge to let her withdraw her guilty plea and go to trial on charges of attempting to blow up Los Angeles police cars in the 1970s.

In documents unsealed Wednesday, she asked Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler to let her withdraw her October guilty plea to aiding and abetting a plot by the radical SLA group.

Immediately after pleading guilty, Olson told reporters outside court that she was innocent and only agreed to the plea bargain because the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks made it unlikely she would get a fair trial.

Days later, Fidler called her into court and questioned her further, making sure she knew what her plea entailed.

"After deeper reflection, I realize I cannot plead guilty when I am not," Olson said in a written declaration signed Monday and filed under seal Tuesday.

"I understand, given the uncertainty of any jury verdict in any trial that I may be found guilty."

Olson, 54, was a fugitive for more than 20 years until her 1999 arrest on charges she tried to murder officers by planting bombs under police cars to avenge the deaths of six SLA members in a 1974 shootout. The bombs didn't explode.

She had been living in Minnesota as the wife of a doctor and mother of three children. She had changed her name from Kathleen Soliah.

Fidler called an unusual hearing last week in which he asked Olson to reaffirm her plea or withdraw it.

Olson then told the judge: "I want to make it clear, your honor, I did not make that bomb. I did not possess that bomb. I did not plant that bomb. But under the concept of aiding and abetting I do plead guilty."

"Because you are guilty of the crimes?" the judge asked her.

"Yes," she said.

In her motion, Olson said that cowardice prevented her from withdrawing her plea earlier. "I am not second-guessing my decision as much as I have found the courage to take what I know is the honest course," she said.

Olson attorney Shawn Snider Chapman argued in the motion that "the continued acceptance by the court of a guilty plea in the face of a defendant's suggestion that in fact he is not guilty runs contrary to all basic conceptions of justice under law."

Olson, who is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 7, could face 20 years to life if her guilty plea stands. Her lawyers had said, however, that they expected her to serve about five years.