TORONTO — The last Western detainee held at the Guantanamo Bay US military prison has returned to Canada after a decade in custody and has been transferred to a maximum security prison in Canada where he awaits parole, Canada’s public safety minister said Saturday.
Vic Toews said that 26-year-old Omar Khadr arrived at a Canadian military base on a US government plane early Saturday and was transferred to the Millhaven maximum security prison in Bath, Ontario.
Khadr pleaded guilty in 2010 to killing a US soldier in Afghanistan and was eligible to return to Canada from Guantanamo Bay last October under terms of a plea deal.
Khadr was 15 when he was captured in 2002 in Afghanistan, and has spent a decade at the Guantanamo prison set up on the US naval base in Cuba to hold suspected terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. He received an eight-year sentence in 2010 after being convicted of throwing a grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer during a 2002 firefight .
Toews noted that the US government initiated the transfer and suggested that Canada had little choice but to accept him under Canadian law.
“Omar Khadr is a known supporter of the al Qaeda terrorist network and a convicted terrorist,” Toews said. “Omar Khadr was born in Canada and is a Canadian citizen. As a Canadian citizen, he has a right to enter Canada after the completion of his sentence.”
John Norris, Khadr’s Canadian lawyer, has said Khadr would be eligible for parole as early as the spring of 2013. It will be up to Canada’s national parole board to release him, Toews said.
“I am satisfied the Correctional Service of Canada can administer Omar Khadr’s sentence in a manner which recognizes the serious nature of the crimes that he has committed and ensure the safety of Canadians is protected during incarceration,” Toews said.
Toews said that Omar Khadr’s mother and sister “have openly applauded” his father’s “crimes and terrorist activities” and noted that Omar has had “little contact with Canadian society and will require substantial management in order to ensure safe integration in Canada.”
Khadr’s family and lawyer did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment about his release.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government had long refused to request the return of Khadr, the youngest detainee held at Guantanamo. The reluctance is partly due to suspicions about the Khadr family, which has been called “the first family of terrorism.”
Defense attorneys have said Khadr was pushed into fighting the Americans in Afghanistan by his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, an alleged al Qaeda financier whose family stayed with Osama bin Laden briefly when Omar Khadr was a boy.
The Egyptian-born father was killed in 2003 when a Pakistani military helicopter shelled the house where he was staying with senior al Qaeda operatives.
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta signed off on Khadr’s transfer in April. Panetta said in Ottawa earlier this year that sending Khadr back to Canada would be an important step because it would serve as an example to other detainees who are looking to return to their home countries or other places. Some Guantanamo detainees have been reluctant to agree to plea deals after noting that Khadr had remained in Guantanamo despite being eligible to leave since last October.
The US Defense Department confirmed the transfer in a statement and said 166 detainees remain in detention at Guantanamo Bay.
Suzanne Nossel, Amnesty International USA Executive Director, said the Guantanamo prison should finally be closed. She said Canada now has a chance to right what she called the many wrongs against Khadr and called for an investigation into Khadr’s allegations of torture.
“Given the Obama administration’s glacial pace towards closing the US-controlled detention center, little and late though it is, today’s news represents progress,” Nossell said in a statement. “Khadr was imprisoned at the age of 15, subjected to ill-treatment and then prosecuted in a military commissions system that does not meet international fair trial standards. Growing up in Guantanamo and facing more prison time in Canada, his future remains uncertain.”