Famous athlete Oscar Pistorius released from prison

Famous South African athlete Oscar Pistoriusin prison since 2014 for killing his girlfriend model Reeva Steenkamp, He was released from prison this Friday after being granted parole, The South African Department of Correctional Services (DCS).

“The Department of Correctional Services (DCS) confirms that Oscar Pistorius is on parole from 5 January 2024. He has been accepted into the community prison system and is now at home,” the institution said.

Prison authorities granted Pistorius parole on November 24 during a closed-door hearing at Atteridgeville Prison in Pretoria.

This Wednesday, DCS indicated that, despite “high public profile” athletes, the “general conditions” of that regime will apply, such as, for example, staying “at home at certain times of the day”.

“He will not be able to consume alcohol or other substances. (…) Like other people on parole, Pistorius is prohibited from giving interviews to the media,” added the agency, specifying that these restrictions will apply until the end of his sentence in 2029.

In a statement reported by local media, the mother of the murdered model, June Steenkampsaid this Friday that the pain of his daughter’s death was still “raw and real” and regretted the “intensity of (media) coverage of the trial” and requests for parole later meant a “loss” of their privacy” and “made peaceful grieving difficult.

“We have always known that probation is a part The South African legal system and we’ve always said that the law has to take its course,” Steenkamp said, although he emphasized that “there can never be justice if your loved one never comes back.”

“The conditions set by the parole board, which include anger management courses and gender-based violence programs, send a clear message that gender-based violence is taken seriously,” he added.

This was the second time Pistorius had applied for parole, which was rejected last March despite the fact that the convict claimed that both his time in prison and the minimum required to qualify for the measure had been unfairly increased, breaching his “fundamental rights”. ” “.

Pistorius, 37, then surrendered his case Constitutional Court of South Africawho made a decision last October that the athlete meets the conditions for parole.

Before the November hearing that finally granted it began, June Steenkamp said she was not “convinced” that “Oscar has been rehabilitated,” according to a letter read by her lawyers.

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 height of his fame and fortune from his sporting career.

He shot her four times through the closed bathroom door and unsuccessfully tried to defend himself that he had panicked when he mistook the model for a thief who entered the house through the bathroom window.

“I don’t believe Oscar’s version. (…) I don’t know anyone who does. My dear daughter screamed for her life loud enough for the neighbors to hear,” he said in his letter last November. mother of the victim.

Pistorius did not get out of prison this Friday, but the father of the murdered model, Barry Steenkamp, who died at the age of 80 last September.

After a trial that attracted worldwide media attention, Pistorius was initially sentenced in October 2014 to five years in prison for manslaughter, but the prosecution appealed the verdict.

In 2015 Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa overturned that conviction and found him guilty of murder, sending the case back to a lower court that sentenced Pistorius to six years in prison for murder in July 2016.

However, after another appeal by the Prosecutor’s Office, Supreme Court of Appeal In November 2017, he increased the sentence to fifteen years, which is the minimum stipulated 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 some time on bail and under house arrest – had already spent in prison.

Born with a genetic problem that caused his parents to decide to amputate both of his legs below the knee when he was eleven months old, Pistorius gained world fame by running at the London Olympics (2012) on two carbon prostheses.