South Africa | Oscar Pistorius’ parole request denied

(Pretoria) The former South African Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius, sentenced for the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp ten years ago, will remain in prison, a prison commission having refused his request for parole on Friday.

The prison services informed, to everyone’s surprise and in a brief press release, that the refusal was linked to the fact that the convict had not yet served a sufficient part of his sentence to be able to obtain an early release.

“The detainee has not completed the minimum detention period, as determined by the Supreme Court of Appeals,” the last instance to convict Pistorius in 2017 after multiple appeals, the statement said.

In a brief memo obtained by AFP, and dated Tuesday, this court explains that the sentence imposed begins from the date of his conviction in 2017 and not from his first conviction in 2014.

“The request was refused” and “will be re-examined in a year,” said the lawyer for the victim’s family, Ms.^e Tania Koen, welcoming the decision.

Prison services spokesman Singabakho Nxumalo told reporters that Oscar Pistorius will not have completed the minimum required until August 2024, when he can apply for early release again.

He had been eligible since July 2021, the prison administration had however announced for months.

An ad hoc committee met Friday morning at Atteridgeville prison near Pretoria, where the 36-year-old ex-athlete is serving a sentence of more than 13 years. South African law provides that a person convicted of murder can benefit from early release once half of his sentence has elapsed.

Reeva Steenkamp’s parents had expressed their opposition to her early release, believing that Oscar Pistorius never told the truth.

“I don’t believe his story,” the mother, June Steenkamp, ​​said visibly distressed when she arrived outside the prison.

She did not testify in front of the murderer of her daughter, the commission having decided to hear the latter in a second time, specified her lawyer Tania Koen.

The victim’s parents have been living “a life sentence” since the violent death of their daughter, Ms.^e Koen. “They miss her every day.”

They “believe that he should not be released” because “he has shown no remorse and he is not rehabilitated, because if he was he would have been honest and would have told the true story of what happened. happened that night,” she insisted.

Legal saga

In the early hours of Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2013, Pistorius fired a gun through his bedroom bathroom door. Reeva Steenkamp, ​​a 29-year-old model, is shot four times.

Rich, famous, the six-time Paralympic champion had entered the legend of sport a year earlier by aligning himself with the able-bodied in the 400 meters at the London Olympics, a first for a double amputee.

“Blade Runner”, his nickname in reference to his carbon prostheses, was arrested in the early morning. He pleads misunderstanding, said he believed that a burglar had entered his ultra-secure residence.

During his trial, broadcast live on television in 2014, the ex-star appeared in tears, vomiting when reading the autopsy report. He was sentenced to five years in prison for manslaughter.

The prosecution finds the justice too lenient and appeals and reclassifies as murder. The legal saga keeps the media spellbound, the world is passionate about this extraordinary case.

On appeal, Pistorius stands on his stumps in an attempt to win the judge’s sympathy. He is sentenced to six years in prison.

The prosecution still considers the sentence insufficient. In 2017, the Supreme Court of Appeal sentenced him to 13 years and 5 months in prison. Dropped by his sponsors, ruined, the fallen idol sells his house to pay his lawyers.