Ex-Gitmo detainee Khadr to remain in federal jail

A Canadian judge ruled Friday that former Guantanamo Bay inmate Omar Khadr will not be transferred from a maximum-security federal prison to a provincial jail.

Justice John Rooke dismissed an application from Khadr's lawyer that his 27-year-old client be moved out of the Edmonton Institution in Alberta.

Lawyer Dennis Edney had argued that his client should be treated as a young offender and be moved out of maximum security.

The Toronto-born Khadr pleaded guilty in 2010 to five war crime offences, including murder, for killing an American soldier in Afghanistan when he was 15.

A US military commission convicted him of throwing a grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer during a 2002 firefight. He was sentenced to eight years, but the military commission did not specify if it was a youth or adult sentence.

Khadr spent a decade at Guantanamo, the US naval base in Cuba. In September 2012, he was transferred to Canada to serve the remainder of his sentence. He was first incarcerated largely in isolation at the maximum security Millhaven Institution in eastern Ontario before moving to Edmonton in May.

Edney had argued that an eight-year sentence for the murder and four other crimes only made sense as a youth sentence.

But the federal government argued that Khadr was given eight years as a youth for murder and the sentences on the four remaining offences were to be served concurrently as an adult.

Rooke agreed that Khadr was sentenced as a youth on the murder charge and as an adult on the four other charges. The issue then became where best to serve the sentence.


AP