Former Paralympian Oscar Pistorius is set to be released on parole in South Africa, almost 11 years after murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
Pistorius shot Ms Steenkamp multiple times through a bathroom door in 2013. He later claimed he mistook her for a burglar.
He was convicted of murder in 2015 after an appeal court overturned an earlier verdict of culpable homicide. The now 37-year-old will live under strict conditions in South Africa until his sentence expires in 2029, reports the BBC.
South African law allows offenders to be considered for parole once they serve half of their total sentence. Pistorius was jailed for 13 years and five months in 2017.
He has been in prison since he was first convicted in 2014.
Pistorius, a Paralympic champion, had his lower legs amputated when he was less than a year old. Relying on prosthetics to walk, he became a world-renowned athlete known as “the blade runner”.
A successful career on the track saw him winning multiple Paralympic golds before he competed against non-disabled athletes at the London Olmpyics in 2012. It was just six months later that he murdered Ms Steenkamp.
Despite his profile, South Africa’s department of correctional services says he will be treated like anyone else on parole. He will be banned from drinking alcohol, confined to his home at certain hours, and barred from speaking to the media.
Ms Steenkamp was 29 when she was murdered. After graduating in law, she worked as a successful model and TV presenter, appearing on a reality TV show called Tropika Island of Treasure.
She had planned to start a law firm to help abused women. She had been with Pistorius for three months when he fired four shoots through a toilet door at his home in Pretoria on Valentine’s Day 2013.
Ms Steenkamp died almost instantly. Pistorius was charged with murder before being convicted of the lesser offence, cuplable homicide (manslaughter) in 2014.
A year later judges changed his conviction to murder, saying he “fired without having a rational or genuine fear that his life was in danger”. Ms Steenkamp’s mother June told the parole board she did not oppose Pistorius’s release, but hoped he had dealt with “his huge anger issues”.
She said she would be “concerned for the safety of any woman” who comes into contact with him. And, while she belives he had not shown remorse, she said she decided to forgive him “long ago, as I knew most certainly that I would not be able to survive if I had to cling to my anger”.
