TORONTO -- Canada's spy agency ignored human-rights concerns in deciding to interview a Canadian detainee who was then a teenager in the U.S. Guantánamo Bay detention center, a watchdog committee said Wednesday.

A report issued by the Security Intelligence Review Committee said there was no evidence the Canadian Security Intelligence Service took Omar Khadr's young age into account.

Toronto-born Khadr is being held at the U.S. prison for allegedly throwing a grenade in Afghanistan when he was just 15, killing a U.S. soldier. Khadr is now 22 years old.

There was widespread media reporting on allegations of mistreatment and abuse of detainees in U.S. custody in Guantánamo and Afghanistan when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service interviewed Khadr in February 2003, the review committee report says.

Documents also surfaced earlier this year showing Khadr's U.S. captors mistreated him through sleep deprivation and isolation ahead of an interview from Canada's Foreign Ministry in 2004.

''SIRC believes that CSIS failed to take into account that, while in U.S. custody, Khadr had been denied certain basic rights which would have been afforded to him as a youth,'' the report said.

The report says ``the time may have come for CSIS to undertake a fundamental reassessment of how it carries out its work, and to shift its operational culture to keep pace with recent political and legal developments.''

The overview body hopes changes CSIS recently implemented would help to balance human rights issues with the need for investigation, as well as establish a policy framework to guide its interactions with youth.

Khadr has spent more than six years at Guantánamo, the lone remaining Westerner at the U.S. holding facility for prisoners in the war on terror.

A U.S. military commission is considering the charges against Khadr. Hearings have been suspended pending a review of his case.

Successive governing Canadian leaders, both Liberal and Conservative, have refrained from intervening in the case. The Tories have rejected a growing chorus of calls to repatriate Khadr and deal with him on Canadian soil.

The Federal Court of Canada ruled in April the government must ask the United States ''as soon as practical'' to return Khadr home. The government is appealing that decision.

The 30-page SIRC report was given to Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan, who issued a statement Wednesday saying that the government is ``reviewing the report with interest.''

Its findings and recommendations will be nonbinding, but could be taken into account as the government appeals the federal court decision to have the Canadian detainee repatriated.

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