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An Edmonton judge deciding if former Guantanamo Bay inmate Omar Khadr should be transferred from a federal prison says his ruling will come down to whether he believes the 27-year-old is serving time as a youth or an adult.

Justice John Rooke said Monday that the U.S. military did not specify that when it handed Khadr an eight-year sentence for killing an American special forces soldier in Afghanistan when Khadr was 15.

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Khadr pleaded guilty to five war crime offences, including murder, in 2010.

The sentence he received in Guantanamo, if it occurred here in Canada, would be treated as a youth sentence

He is now an inmate at the maximum-security Edmonton Institution. His lawyer, Dennis Edney, argued that he should be treated as a young offender and moved to a provincial jail.

Edney told the court that an eight-year sentence for the murder and four other crimes only makes sense as a youth sentence.

But the federal government argued that Khadr was given eight years as a youth for murder and the sentences on the four remaining offences were to be served concurrently as an adult.