Toronto: Canada paid a settlement of C$10.5 million ($8.1 million) to former Guantanamo Bay inmate Omar Khadr, the Globe and Mail reported on Thursday.
The payout was given to Khadr on Wednesday and was cashed immediately, the report said, citing a source involved in the transaction.
Speaking strictly on condition of anonymity, a source familiar with the situation said the Liberal government wanted to get ahead of an attempt by two Americans to enforce a massive US court award against Khadr in Canadian court. “The money has been paid,” the source said.
Reuters reported earlier in the week that Canada's Liberal government would apologise to Khadr and pay him a compensation.
A Canadian citizen, Khadr was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 at age 15 after a firefight with US soldiers.
He pleaded guilty to killing a US Army medic and became the youngest inmate held at the military prison in Cuba.
Khadr later recanted and his lawyers said he had been grossly mistreated. In 2010, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that Canada breached his rights by sending intelligence agents to interrogate him and sharing the results with the United States.
Khadr spent a decade in Guantanamo before being returned to Canada in 2012 to serve the rest of his sentence and was released in 2015.
Khadr was taken to Afghanistan by his father, an al Qaeda member, who apprenticed the boy to a group of bomb makers. The father died in a battle with Pakistani forces in 2003.
Case divides Canada
His case has divided Canadians.
Human rights advocates such as Amnesty International say the one-time child soldier was denied due process while the then-Conservative government dismissed calls to seek leniency, noting he had pleaded guilty to a serious crime.
Khadr had sued Ottawa for C$20 million and the government would have weighed the political damage of continuing to fight him in court, Professor Audrey Macklin, chair of human rights law at the University of Toronto, said on Wednesday.
Asked if he denounces violent jihad, Khadr softly but firmly replied: "Yes."
Khadr was the first person since World War II to be prosecuted in a war crimes tribunal for acts committed as a juvenile.
Bail conditions imposed by an Alberta court include that Khadr wear an electronic monitoring device, live with his lawyer in Edmonton, observe a nightly curfew, and has only monitored contact with his family.
A judge had ruled in April that Khadr should be released on bail, but the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper appealed, arguing that his release would harm Canada's relationship with the United States.
'Disappointed'
"We are disappointed with today's decision, and regret that a convicted terrorist has been allowed back into Canadian society without having served his full sentence," a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said in a statement.
The Canadian Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that Canada breached Khadr's rights by sending intelligence agents to interrogate him at Guantanamo Bay in both 2003 and 2004, and by sharing the results with the United States.
Khadr was taken to Afghanistan by his father, a senior al Qaeda member, who apprenticed the boy to a group of bomb makers who opened fire when US troops went to their compound.
A firefight followed, during which Khadr was blinded in one eye and shot twice in the back.
