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“We were unsure of what would happen. There are rules and regulations about foreign jail time and we were gearing up to argue that once he got settled,” said Paul DeHart, his father. “We still don’t know how they calculated the final date.”

DeHart is now scheduled for release on Sept. 11, 2018, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

He has been placed in Federal Correctional Institution Ashland, a low-security federal prison for men in Boyd County, Ky., about 200 kilometres east of Lexington.

Paul DeHart said they were pleased to learn he was granted a low security rating.

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“It’s certainly a step up from a crowded basement in Kentucky.” He said his son has been treated well.

Jerry Boley, a spokesman for the prison, said DeHart arrived Wednesday. The prison has 1,036 inmates.

Ashland was once home to David Kernell, responsible for hacking into Sarah Palin’s email account during her 2008 run as the U.S. vice-presidential candidate.

DeHart long claimed wrongful prosecution, accusing the U.S. government of using child pornography as a ruse to probe his activist activities.

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His case became a bizarre and troubling story involving Anonymous hackers, WikiLeaks whistleblowers, Russian spies, military secrets and a dossier purporting to contain highly inflammatory U.S. intelligence secrets. The case was revealed in a lengthy series by the National Post.

DeHart is a former member of the U.S. Air National Guard who trained in the secretive drone program at the same time he was involved in Anonymous, the global hacktivist group. After his house was searched and his computer equipment seized, he visited the Russian embassy and discussed defecting to Russia.

He fled to Canada in 2013 ahead of a criminal trial on child pornography charges but his prosecution seemed to be triggered by his activities running a dark web Internet server used to leak a classified U.S. government document, likely destined to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks referred to DeHart as an “alleged WikiLeaks middleman.”

While in U.S. custody, Dehart claims he was tortured by authorities between interrogations about national security and espionage matters. He was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder while in Canada.

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His asylum claim was rejected and in March 2015, he was deported to the United States where he was immediately rearrested. Court records show the U.S. government was on the verge of making an official extradition request at the time.

Tor Ekeland, DeHart’s New York-based lawyer who specializes in computer crime and technology cases, praised the prison system’s decision: “I’m very happy with the Bureau of Prison’s determination to give him credit for the time Matt spent in prison in Canada, It’s the right decision.”