Attorneys for Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr, a Canadian held at the US "war on terror" jail since his teens, filed a court petition Friday to force Canada's prime minister to help win his release.
The attorneys want Prime Minister Stephen Harper to demand that Khadr be returned to Canada before he faces a special military tribunal at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, later this year.
Harper has repeatedly refused to ask for Khadr's repatriation before the end of the proceedings at the controversial US prison camp despite pressure from opposition lawmakers and human rights groups.
Khadr has been held at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba since his arrest in 2002, when he was 15 years old, and faces a trial before a special US military tribunal for alleged war crimes in October.
The US government charges that Khadr, who was the lone survivor of a four-hour US bombardment of an Al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002, rose from the rubble and killed a US sergeant with a grenade.
