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Omar Khadr no longer attending RDC

Dec 19, 2018 | 7:08 PM

Omar Khadr, the former Guantanamo Bay detainee who received a multi-million dollar settlement from the federal government after his rights were violated, is no longer attending Red Deer College.

Khadr told The Canadian Press in August 2017 that he’d been accepted into the RDC Nursing four-year program.

He is no longer enrolled.

“We can confirm that Mr. Omar Khadr is no longer enrolled at Red Deer College,” college officials told rdnewsNOW in a statement.

It’s now known when or why Khadr left the program. The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act prevents RDC from releasing any further details.

RDC President and CEO Joel Ward told rdnewsNOW last August that Khadr had met the criteria for acceptance into the Nursing program and was as welcome at the college as any other student.

“Every student who applies is selected on their merit, their past history, academic credentials and other things, so he would’ve had the same opportunity as any student applying to that,” Ward said at the time.

Khadr, 32, was at the centre of a political firestorm after it became known in July 2017 that the Canadian government, which apologized to him for breaching his rights, had paid him $10.5 million in compensation.

American soldiers captured a badly wounded Khadr, then 15 years old, in July 2002 following a fierce assault on a compound in Afghanistan in which a U.S. special forces soldier was killed. Khadr later said he pleaded guilty before the commission to throwing the deadly grenade as a way out of American detention. He returned to Canada in 2012 to serve out the rest of the eight-year sentence he was given.

Khadr was in an Edmonton courtroom last week to apply for changes to bail conditions which were imposed on him while he appeals war crimes convictions by a U.S. military commission. He is asking for a Canadian passport to travel to Saudi Arabia and wants permission to speak to his sister on his own.

(With files from The Canadian Press)