EDMONTON—“I’m ready,” Omar Khadr recently told a prison psychologist about his potential release. “I hope that people get a chance to know the new me.”

Khadr will learn his fate Thursday morning, when once again he will be driven under escort from Bowden Institution in Innisfail, Alta., his latest prison home after more than 12 years of incarceration, to the Edmonton courthouse.

Appeals Court Justice Myra Bielby is scheduled to deliver her decision on the federal government’s 11th-hour attempt to keep the 28-year-old behind bars rather than be released on bail.

There has been endless speculation and debate as to Khadr’s psychological state after more than a decade spent at Guantanamo Bay, where he was once hog-tied and used as a human mop during an interrogation session.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and various public safety ministers have branded him a terrorist and murderer, but it is a federal government report filed in court this week that presents the most sympathetic portrait of Khadr to date.

“In prison, I had lots of bad experiences. If I hold on to each one, I would have been very bitter,” he told the prison psychologist, Nathan Lau, during an interview on Feb. 20.

“I can’t afford to be bitter. I did something bad and I’m here for a reason. The only way to survive is to have hope,” he said. “If I hope for people to give me a second chance, I should afford them the same.”

Lau’s assessment led to Khadr’s reclassification from a medium security inmate to one that requires minimum security, and provides some of the most candid and detailed descriptions of Khadr’s past and outlook for the future.

“If I could do things differently, I probably would have challenged my father more,” he told Lau. “I don’t think I could have said ‘no’ to him but would have tried.”

Ahmed Said Khadr, Khadr’s father, who was killed by Pakistani forces in 2003, was a charity worker with ties to Al Qaeda’s elite. He shuttled Khadr and his siblings between their home in Scarborough to residences in Afghanistan and Pakistan throughout the 1990s.

“Then 9-11 happens. My dad wasn’t around and everyone freaked out,” Khadr told Lau and then described the lead-up to July 27, 2002, when he was shot and captured after, it is alleged, he’d thrown a grenade that fatally wounded U.S. Delta Force Sgt. Christopher Speer.

“I’ll tell you what I thought happened. I heard Americans. I heard shooting. I was scared. I had a hand grenade. I threw it over my back and it exploded,” he said. “I wanted to scare them away, I wasn’t thinking of the consequences. After that I was shot.”

In the years since his arrest, Khadr said, he has seen evidence that he was buried under rubble and could not have thrown the grenade that hit Speer. “I still take responsibility but hold on to hope it wasn’t me … I just hope I wasn’t the person responsible for killing someone.”

Khadr describes being happy with this transfer to Canada in 2012 but had difficulty adapting to the “con code” of federal penitentiaries. “It’s hard to build a relationship with the guards here. We can’t seem to be too friendly with each other (con code). It gets me in some trouble when I refuse to abide by the con code,” he said.

He told Lau about having to quit his job as a food server while held in Millhaven Institution in Ontario. “This guy, he thinks we are buddies and that I will give him a whole bag of butter. I wouldn’t give it to him and he gets p---ed off. I talked to my Correctional Officer and just quit the job. There was too much drama.”

Later, at the Edmonton Institution, he was punched in the face by another inmate who said his family was in the military.

Khadr says he looks forward to life on the outside but conceded, “I don’t think it will be a piece of cake.”

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“I’ve screwed up in the past and I’m worried it will haunt me. People will think I’m the same person I was 12 or 13 years ago. They might treat me in the same light,” he said.

“However, if I carry myself with dignity and respect, people will respect me. I hope there won’t be this terrorism nonsense. I’m not going to get involved.”

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