Former Paralympian Oscar Pistorius released on parole after serving 9 years for murder

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Johannesburg. Former Paralympian Oscar Pistorius has been released on parole from a South African prison after serving nine years in prison for the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

Pistorius shot Reeva through the closed bathroom door of his mansion in Pretoria on Valentine’s Day 2013 and later said that he had mistaken her for a burglar.

The decision to grant him parole was made last November, The Guardian reports.

The country’s prisons department said in a statement, “The Department of Correctional Services is able to confirm that Oscar Pistorius has been granted parole with effect from January 5, 2024. He was admitted to the community corrections system and is now home. Are.”

South African authorities insisted that Pistorius would not receive any special treatment due to his “high public profile”.

The 37-year-old man will be confined to his home for certain hours of the day and banned from drinking alcohol. They will have to seek permission to travel or take up employment, and will also not be allowed to talk to the media.

The South African athlete who had his lower leg amputated as a child became an Olympic sprinter whose high-tech prosthetics earned him the nickname “Blade Runner”, ultimately leading to an earlier ruling being overturned by an appeals court. After he was convicted of culpable homicide in 2015.

He has been in prison since October 2014, when he was first convicted and began a five-year prison sentence.

Later, he was placed under house arrest at his uncle’s house to serve the remainder of his sentence. But the following month, the Supreme Court of Appeal overturned the lower judge’s decision and found Pistorius guilty of murder.

In 2016, he was sentenced to six years in prison. The following year, the Supreme Court ruled that the sentence was “surprisingly lenient” and increased it to 15 years, subtracting time already served.

Pistorius achieved considerable success on the track, initially at the Paralympics where he won several gold medals. His reputation was further strengthened when he competed against able-bodied athletes at the 2012 London Olympics.

–IANS

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