The famous South African athlete Oscar Pistorius, In prison since 2014 for having killed his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, a year earlier, he was released from prison. Pistorius was released on parole, South Africa’s Department of Correctional Services (DCS) confirmed.
“The Department of Correctional Services (DCS) confirms that Oscar Pistorius is on parole, effective January 5, 2024. He was admitted to the community prison system and is now home,” said this institution through a release.
Read also: The Guatemalan National Team is preparing for the friendly against Iceland
The prison authorities granted Pistorius conditional release on November 24. This during a closed-door hearing at Atteridgeville prison in Pretoria.
The DCS indicated that, despite the athlete’s “high public profile”, the “general conditions” of that regime will apply to him. For example, being “at home at certain times of the day.”
South African former Paralympic star Oscar Pistorius – dubbed ‘Blade Runner’ for his carbon-fiber prosthetic legs – was released on parole nearly 11 years after he killed Reeva Steenkamp, his then girlfriend pic.twitter.com/hLGn5BCHdv
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 5, 2024
“You will not be able to consume alcohol or other substances. (…) Like other people on parole, Pistorius is prohibited from conducting interviews with the media,” the agency added, specifying that these restrictions will be valid until the sentence expires in 2029.
In a statement reported by local media, the mother of the murdered model, June Steenkamp, said this Friday that the pain over her daughter’s death is still “raw and real” and regretted that “the intensity of the (media) coverage of the trial” and the subsequent parole requests meant the “loss” of his privacy” and “made it difficult to grieve peacefully.”
“We have always known that probation is part of the South African legal system. And we have always said that the law must take its course,” said Steenkamp. Although he stressed that “there can never be justice if your loved one will never return.”
South Africa has released on parole former Paralympic star Oscar Pistorius, South Africa’s correctional services department said on Friday. #CGTNAmerica pic.twitter.com/gphUUiaPb5
— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) January 5, 2024
“The conditions imposed by the parole board, which include anger management courses and programs on gender violence, send a clear message that gender violence is taken seriously,” he added.
Finally get freedom
This was the second time Pistorius had requested parole, which he was denied last March. This despite the fact that the convicted man argued that he unfairly increased both his prison time and the minimum required to qualify for that measure. He said that this way they violated his “fundamental rights.”
Pistorius, 37, then took his case to the Constitutional Court of South Africa, which last October ruled that the athlete was eligible for parole.
Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius was released from prison on parole Friday after he served nearly nine years of his 13-year, 5-month murder sentence for the shooting of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in 2013. https://t.co/lQyK7JJAv2
— ESPN (@espn) January 5, 2024
Before the November hearing began where it was finally granted, June Steenkamp said she was not “convinced” that “Oscar has been rehabilitated,” according to a letter read by her lawyers.
the murder
Pistorius is serving time for shooting dead Reeva Steenkamp, then 29, at her home in Pretoria on Valentine’s Day 2013, when he was at the peak of his fame and had amassed a fortune from his sporting career.
He shot her four times through the closed bathroom door and has tried unsuccessfully to defend that he panicked when he mistook the model for a thief who had entered the home through the bathroom window.
“I don’t believe in Oscar’s version. (…) I don’t know anyone who does it. “My dear daughter screamed for her life loud enough for the neighbors to hear,” she noted last November, in the letter from her, the victim’s mother.
His sentence
Following a trial that garnered worldwide media attention, Pistorius was initially sentenced in October 2014 to five years. This for the crime of reckless homicide, but the Prosecutor’s Office appealed the ruling.
In 2015, South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal overturned that conviction and found him guilty of murder. He referred the case back to a lower court which, in July 2016, sentenced Pistorius to six years in prison for murder.
However, after another appeal by the Prosecutor’s Office, the Supreme Court of Appeal increased the sentence in November 2017 to fifteen years. It is the minimum contemplated by law in cases of murder except in exceptional situations.
In practice, that sentence meant thirteen years and five months in prison, after deducting the time that Pistorius – who spent a period on bail and under house arrest – had already spent in prison.
