Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, known as the "child soldier," was sentenced Sunday at Guantanamo Bay prison to 40 years in jail for his conviction on murder and terrorism charges, Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper reported.
But under an earlier plea agreement, in which he admitted guilt, his sentence will be capped at eight years and he could return to Canada after one more year at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba, DPA reported.
The sentence followed nine hours of deliberation by the US military commission over Saturday and Sunday.
The eight years in prison that lie ahead of Khadr are in addition to the eight he has already spent at Guantanamo.
On Thursday, Khadr, who was only 15 when he was arrested in Pakistan by US forces in 2002, apologized to the wife of a US soldier he killed in Afghanistan, Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer, and to her two children.
"You'll forever be a murderer in my eyes. It doesn't matter what you say from this day on," Tabitha Speer said, according to the Toronto Sun.
On Sunday, Speer cheered when the sentence was announced in the Guantanamo courtroom.
Khadr could have faced life imprisonment had he been convicted in a trial.