Omar Khadr has a steep climb ahead, convincing some Canadians that he’s a rehabilitated child warrior. In the minds of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and others he will forever be the scion of an Al Qaeda family that cheered the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that brought down the Twin Towers.

His dream of becoming “the next Joe on the street who nobody knows and who nobody gives a second look or thought to” seems a remote likelihood as he tastes freedom for the first time, after nearly 13 years behind bars without trial for allegedly throwing a grenade in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was 15 that killed an American soldier.

But as the Star’s Michelle Shephard writes in an exclusive print interview with the world’s most notorious former child prisoner Khadr, now 28, is anything but the frozen-in-time villain that the Harper government makes him out to be as it appeals his May 7 release on bail. However politically convenient that image may be for the Tories, who never tire of hyping the terror threat, the reality is more complex.

Khadr remains an elusive figure, at times reluctant to tell his story. After spending half his life as a prisoner abandoned by Canada — and abused, tortured and denied justice by his American captors — Khadr still feels like a stunned teenager feeling his way in a strange new world. But the searching glimpses Shephard provides in her interview give reason to hope that he is a transformed man.

Far from revelling in his notoriety Khadr just wants to rebuild his life under the supervision of his dogged Edmonton lawyer Dennis Edney, attending a Christian university and learning what “standing upright” after a fall is all about. He says he holds no grudges. He says he hopes to become a good influence on his abusive family.

His expectations are modest. “I don’t wish people to love me. I don’t wish people to hate me. I just wish for people to give me a chance.”

He is brutally honest about his emotions. Some day, he says, he will “just jump under the bed and cry my eyes out” over his misspent youth and lost years.

He is no less honest about his past. He threw a grenade during the chaotic Afghan firefight. For years he believed it was the one that fatally wounded Sgt. Christopher Speer, and confessed to it. But now he is not sure. He questions his own foggy recollection. “I have memories but I don’t know if they’re mine, if they are accurate or not.” After being shot “I lost consciousness for over a week.” There is also evidence that Khadr was found buried under rubble, and that there may have been another fighter alive in the compound when the deadly grenade was thrown.

Most tellingly, Khadr has learned to value human life. He clings to the hope “that, you know, maybe my memories were not true.” It matters, he says, “because on one side, I killed another person, and on the other side, I didn’t. So it does make a huge difference.”

This is not the brash child warrior of 2002 talking. This is a wiser, if sadder, man.