This is Pretoria (Reuters).Oscar Pistorius, a former Paralympic winner from South Africa, was freed on parole on Friday, almost 11 years after killing his girlfriend in a crime that shocked a country used to seeing a lot of violence against women.
The 29-year-old model Reeva Steenkamp was killed on Valentine’s Day 2013 by Pistorius, who was known as “Blade Runner” because of his carbon-fiber artificial legs.
He has said over and over that he thought Steenkamp was an intruder when he fired four shots into the bathroom of his Pretoria home, which is why he has been convicted more than once.
Based on records from the Department of Correctional Services, Oscar Pistorius will be free on release from January 5, 2024. “He was accepted into the Community Corrections system and is now at home,” the jails department of the country said in a statement.
Before he was found guilty of murder, Pistorius, who is now 37 years old, spent about eight and a half years in jail and seven months under house arrest. A parole board ruled in November that he could go free since he had served more than half of his sentence.
It was Reeva’s mother June who said in a statement released by the Steenkamp family lawyer on Friday, “There can never be justice if your loved one is never coming back, and no amount of time served will bring Reeva back.”
“Those of us who are still here are serving a life sentence,” June Steenkamp said, adding that all she wanted was to be able to live in peace once Pistorius got out on parole.
Until the end of his sentence in December 2029, someone will be watching him. Pistorius will have to let this person know if he looks for work or moves.
According to the Steenkamp family, he also has to keep going to anger management treatment and sessions on gender-based violence as part of the terms of his parole.
The conditions set by the parole board, according to June Steenkamp, made her believe in the South African justice system even more because they make it clear that abuse against women is taken seriously.
When asked about Pistorius’s release on Friday, his lawyer did not reply right away.
The local news says that he will live with his uncle Arnold Pistorius in a rich suburb of Pretoria.
Different South Africans have different feelings about his release. Some think he did his time, while others think his sentence was too light.
“He made good on his deal. A person in the area told reporters gathering outside of his uncle’s house on Friday morning, “Let him rebuild his life.”
From An Olympian To A Convicted Killer
Once upon a time, Pistorius was the talk of the sports world and a leading voice for disabled athletes, who he fought to be able to compete with able-bodied athletes at big sports events.
Just a few months before he shot and killed his girlfriend, Pistorius made it to the semi-finals of the 400-meter race at the London Olympics, making him the first double amputee to do so.
Athletes with disabilities won two gold medals for him.
A high court put him in jail for five years for culpable murder in October 2014. In December 2015, the Supreme Court of Appeal found him guilty of murder after his lawyers had reviewed that decision. But when he was sentenced in July 2016, he only got six years, even though authorities wanted a minimum of fifteen years.
After that, in November 2017, the Supreme Court of Appeal increased his sentence by more than two years, to thirteen years and five months. They said that the first punishment was “shockingly lenient.”
The two men met in 2022 during a “victim-offender dialogue,” which is an important part of South Africa’s restorative justice system.
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Instead of just sentencing criminals, restorative justice tries to make things right for everyone who was hurt by a crime. Its ideas come from how native cultures dealt with crime before Europeans came to South Africa.
In March, he was first turned down for release. But on March 21, the Constitutional Court said he had served half of his sentence and was available for parole. This was because his first murder conviction was in July 2016, not November 2017.
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