Canada states the amount of time Omar would serve is up to the parole board but prisoners are generally eligible after serving one-third of their sentence.
The Globe and Mail says Omar will be eligible for immediate release when he returns, because Canada will give him credit for time served.
The next year won't be pleasant for Omar:
Mr. Khadr, now a convicted war criminal, was taken after sentencing to Camp 5, a fortress-like copy of a U.S. maximum security prison where he will spend most all but a few hours a day in solitary for the next year.
Omar gave the sentencing panel a statement at the hearing.
In his last statement to the panel, Mr. Khadr... said he hoped they would consider that a U.S. military interrogator threatened to have him gang-raped to death...."This story scared me very much and made me cry," the burly Mr. Khadr, now 24, said in an unsworn statement read by his lawyer to the panel on Friday.
At least one U.S. soldier has confessed to making such threats to detainees:
Joshua Claus, a former U.S. army interrogator, convicted of assault in connection with the beating death of an Afghan detainee at the U.S. detention centre in Bagram, Afghanistan, boasted under oath that he told young detainees a horrific tale of an Afghan boy gang-raped to death by "four big black guys" to persuade them to confess.
Here's a gruesome photo of a wounded Omar on the battlefield where he was captured. He was shot three times by U.S. soldiers and blinded in one eye. After his capture, he was used as a human mop.
As his lawyer says, ""He is not a radical jihadist, he is a victim of his family, his father, …. and he is a victim of this system."
What should we have done with Omar after capturing him at 15? Protected him, provided him with counsel and tried him in accordance with international standards of juvenile justice . Human Rights Watch says:
International standards recognize that children under the age of 18 are a particularly vulnerable group, and are entitled to special care and protection because they are still developing physically, mentally and emotionally. These standards include certain key principles, including the use of detention only as a measure of last resort, the separation of children from adults, the right of children to maintain contact with their families, and the right to a prompt determination of their case. In addition, treaties binding on the United States recognize the special situation of children who have been recruited or used in armed conflict, and their rights to prompt demobilization, and rehabilitation and reintegration assistance.
In cases where children are believed to have committed war crimes, they can be formally charged and should be provided with counsel and tried in accordance with international standards of juvenile justice.
For more on today's sentencing, check out Carol Rosenberg at McClatchey and Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First, who also writes at HuffPo. (Here is her account of the guilty plea hearing.) Thanks to both of them for their Twitter feeds which kept us all up to date.
All of TalkLeft's coverage of his case, more than 40 posts since 2004, is accessible here. If I had to pick one sentence to sum this case up, it would be this one, written by a former blogger named Jeanne D'Arc in 2004:
When he was captured in Afghanistan, he was fifteen -- a child turned into a soldier by parents from hell. And our government's response to this victim of child abuse was to abuse him further.