The federal government is set to offer Omar Khadr an apology and more than $10 million in compensation for abuses he suffered during his detainment in Guantanamo Bay, according to multiple reports.
An announcement of the deal is expected this week, the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star reported late Monday night.
Khadr was 15 years old when he was captured in Afghanistan in 2002, following a shootout with U.S. troops. He was accused of throwing a grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer.
He spent most of the next 10 years in Guantanamo Bay, as the youngest and last Western detainee held at the prison, before accepting a plea deal that enabled him to return to Canada in 2012. He was freed on bail in May 2015 and moved into the care of his Canadian lawyer Dennis Edney.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2010 that Canada violated Khadr’s rights when officials interrogated him at Guantanamo Bay.
"Interrogation of a youth, to elicit statements about the most serious criminal charges while detained in these conditions and without access to counsel, and while knowing that the fruits of the interrogations would be shared with the U.S. prosecutors, offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects," the court ruled.
Speer's widow and another American soldier blinded by the grenade Khadr was accused of throwing filed a wrongful death and injury lawsuit against Khadr in 2014. A U.S. judge granted $134.2 million in damages in 2015, but the plaintiffs said then that there was little chance they would collect any of the money from Khadr because he lives in Canada.
With files from the Associated Press
