Omar Khadr in hospital after surgery

Injury was sustained during firefight in Afghanistan

Former Guantanamo Bay inmate Omar Khadr is recovering from a 19-hour operation on a shoulder that was badly injured in Afghanistan 15 years ago, his lawyer said Monday.

Toronto-born Khadr remained in intensive care at the University of Alberta hospital and it was not clear when he might be able to go home, Dennis Edney, his lawyer, said in an interview from Edmonton.

Three surgeons were involved in Friday’s complicated surgery — first reported by the Globe and Mail — that Edney said should have been done years ago.

“What they did was take bone from different parts of his legs and muscles from other parts of his body to try to rebuild his right shoulder,” Edney said.

“There’s no prognosis — it’s almost experimental in some ways, and hoping that it works.”

Khadr had gone into hospital expecting minor surgery that would have seen him back at school on Tuesday, Edney chuckled.

Now 30, Khadr was horrifically injured as a 15-year-old in a four-hour bombardment and firefight with U.S. soldiers, who captured him in Afghanistan in July 2002. In addition to the shoulder injuries, he was blinded in one eye and still has shrapnel in the other that threatens his sight. After his capture, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay later in 2002. He pled guilty to five war crimes in 2010 and was sentenced to a further eight years in prison.

Khadr, who afterward said he only pleaded guilty to get out of Guantanamo Bay, transferred to Canada in 2012 to serve out his sentence and was subsequently granted bail in May 2015 pending an appeal of his U.S. conviction.

He is currently in school with the goal of beginning a career in nursing.