Canada releases former Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr

Omar Khadr (right) spent 10 years as a Guantanamo Bay detainee

A judge has released a former Guantanamo Bay detainee on bail despite a last minute appeal by the Canadian government to keep him imprisoned.

Omar Khadr was convicted by a US military commission in 2010 of killing a US soldier in Afghanistan.

A lower court judge granted him bail last month, while he completes his appeal against his US conviction.

Canadian-born, he agreed a plea deal to leave Guantanamo and serve the majority of his eight-year sentence there.

"Mr Khadr you're free to go," Court of Appeal Justice Myra Bielby said. Cheers rang out in the courtroom, and Khadr smiled.

Speaking afterwards, Khadr thanked the Canadian public for their trust.

"I'll prove to them that I'm a good person. See who I am as a person, not as a name, and they can make their own judgement after that. I'm still growing, I believe in learning, I didn't have a lot of experience in life and I'm excited to start."

At a press conference outside his lawyer's home Kadhr denounced violent jihad

Khadr's lawyer, Dennis Edney, has offered to let Khadr live with him.

The bail conditions mandate that Khadr wear a tracking bracelet, live with Mr Edney and his wife, abide by an overnight curfew and only access the internet when supervised.

Additionally, he can only communicate with his family in Ontario while supervised and only in English.

Asked by reporters if he denounced violent jihad, Khadr replied: "Yes."

The Canadian government has opposed his petition for bail, arguing that it would undermine Canada's international obligations.

"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," said Jeremy Laurin, a spokesman for Canada's public safety minister.

Khadr is required to live with his lawyer, Dennis Edney

Now 28, Khadr was the youngest prisoner ever detained at Guantanamo Bay. This will be first time he has not been behind bars since he was 15, having spent a decade at the prison in Cuba.

He was convicted of five crimes, including throwing a grenade when he was 15 years old that killed Army Sgt Christopher Speer in Afghanistan.

Khadr was shot and captured during the 2002 fire fight.

After eight years in custody he pleaded guilty and agreed a plea deal in 2010 that stipulated he serve one year of his eight-year sentence at the US naval base in Cuba.

He now says he only pleaded guilty in order to leave the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Canada declined to intervene in Khadr's Guantanamo trial, despite federal court rulings in Ottawa that his rights were violated when Canadian agents interrogated him at Guantanamo Bay.

Khadr was 15 when first detained by the U.S.

The Khadrs have been called Canada's "first family of terror".

Omar Khadr's father, an associate of Osama Bin Laden, took the family to Peshawar in Pakistan to support the Afghan mujahedeen in their war against the Soviet Union when Khadr was an infant. The father died in a fire fight with Pakistani troops near the Afghan border in 2003.

One brother is paralysed from the waist down after being wounded in that same battle. Another has just been released from jail in Toronto after successfully fighting extradition to the US on terror charges.

Omar Khadr's sister, Zaynab, and his mother, Maha, are well known in Canada for their radical views.