Canadian officials describe Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr as an intelligent, humorous 21-year-old who is liked by his American captors and remains “salvageable” if not allowed to languish in the U.S. offshore prison.

This intimate description of the Toronto detainee is contained in two Foreign Affairs Department documents that were released to Ottawa’s parliamentary subcommittee investigating Khadr’s case.

They are based on a series of “welfare visits” that foreign affairs lawyers had with Khadr this spring and it’s clear from the descriptions that the officials were impressed by Khadr’s state of mind.

“Our U.S. military contact repeated what he had said during the welfare visit conducted in March: Omar Khadr is a ‘good kid’ and he is salvageable. (This opinion was also expressed by other U.S. officers encountered during my stay). He said that extended detention in Guantanamo would however run the risk of turning him into a radical,” Foreign Affairs official Karim Amégan wrote.

Amégan described Khadr as blind in his left eye due to shrapnel wounds he suffered when shot and captured on July 27, 2002 in Afghanistan after a firefight where U.S. Delta Force soldier Christopher Speer was fatally wounded. His vision in his right eye is also now impaired and might require surgery, Amégan notes.

A separate report written by official Suneeta Millington states that Khadr sleeps on the floor in his cell to give himself more space and has trouble with his back due to shrapnel. “He also joked that it is this shrapnel which constantly sets off the metal detector when being frisked going in and out of Camp Iguana (the facility where they conduct visits),” she wrote.

Although Khadr is only getting rudimentary classes in Arabic and English, both Amégan and Millington describe him as insightful and bright.

“He indicated that he felt encouraged to start writing again, and would like to pen a comparative study on how different cultures deal with elements of life such as birth, death, marriage, education, divorce and festivals etc.: The impetus for the idea stemming from the sadness and sympathy he felt towards one of the guards who had gone through a divorce,” Millington wrote.

Although officials are cautioned to not talk about the case or any legal matters, Khadr does express hope that he will be released.

“The overarching theme of much of our discussions focused on his desire to get out of Guantanamo, to return to Canada, to fix his health, to educate himself, to have a family and to eventually find a job satisfying his personal commitment to help those in need,” Millington writes. “By contrast, he also expressed a hyper-awareness of the challenges that he would face, but demonstrated no bitterness or anger, emphasizing instead a desire to move forward in life.”

The reports provide a positive portrait of the detainee at a time when the federal government is under pressure to demand his repatriation. They were provided to the media by Khadr’s military lawyer, who has been waging a high-profile campaign to generate sympathy for Khadr’s case in Canada.

“The reports confirm what we've said about Omar – that he is a decent, well-mannered young man, deserving of a chance in life. Canadians need not fear him and he must no longer be punished for the misdeeds of his family,” Kuebler said Tuesday.

Khadr is the second youngest son of Ahmed Said Khadr, a Canadian charity worker who had close ties with Al Qaeda’s elite. Pakistani forces killed him in 2003, but comments by Khadr’s mother and sister on a documentary a year later enraged Canadians and made Khadr’s case unpopular in Canada.

Support for his repatriation has slowly been building since last summer when the Canadian Bar Association issued a statement to Prime Minister Stephen Harper demanding that Canada intervene. The involvement of Liberal Senator Roméo Dallaire who vowed to “harass” the government until Khadr is returned home, bolstered the movement last month.

But the Tories have been unwavering in their support of Khadr’s war crimes trial in Guantanamo. Harper has vowed he will not interfere with the trial, which is expected to begin later this year.