The South African athlete Oscar Pistorios, who is serving a prison sentence for murdering his girlfriend, the model, in 2013 reeva steenkampwill submit this Friday to a hearing by a board that will evaluate whether he is granted parole.
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Pistorius, 36, is expected to appear before the parole board at the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Center in Pretoria in a hearing that, in principle, should be held behind closed doors, local media reported today.
board details
Reeva Steenkamp with Oscar Pistorius.
The board – which includes representatives from the prison service, the police and civilians – will decide whether the Paralympian is eligible for parole after serve half of his fifteen-year prison sentence.
“A minimum period of detention that an inmate must serve is an important milestone in the rehabilitation process for those in our care, as it also serves as a cardinal point for one to be considered for parole and this must be done at the right time”, explained at the end of last October the spokesman for the Department of Correctional Services of South Africa, Singabakho Nxumalo, about the “Pistorius case”.
The board’s decision is expected in the coming days, after deliberation by that committee.
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Last year, Pistorius petitioned the Pretoria High Court to compel prison officials to hold a parole hearing, arguing that he had served more than half of his sentence for Steenkamp’s murder.
Under South African law, offenders serving half their sentences are eligible for parole, a milestone Pistorius said he had reached.
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Background of the case
The athlete claimed to have done everything in his power to rehabilitate himself and show total remorse, according to the statement sent to the court. After a trial that attracted worldwide media attention, Pistorius was initially sentenced in October 2014 to five years in prison for culpable homicide, when Judge Thokozile Masipa considered that there were extenuating circumstances, although the Prosecutor’s Office appealed against that ruling.
In November 2015, the South African High Court of Appeal overturned the athlete’s culpable manslaughter conviction and found him guilty of murder, remanding the case back to the trial court for re-sentencing.
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Oscar Pistorius, South African athlete.
In July 2016, Magistrate Masipa sentenced Pistorius to six years in jail for murder. After another appeal by the Prosecutor’s Office, however, the Supreme Court of Appeal raised the sentence in November 2017 to fifteen years, the minimum contemplated by South African law in cases of murder except in exceptional situations.
In practice, that sentence meant thirteen years and five months in prison, discounting the time that Pistorius – who spent time on bail and under house arrest – had already spent in prison. Last July, the Department of Correctional Services confirmed that a meeting between Pistorius and Steenkamp’s parents had taken place the previous month.
The encounter was part of the athlete’s rehabilitation, a requirement to apply for probation. Pistorius is serving time for shooting Steenkamp to death at his Pretoria home on Valentine’s Day 2013, when he was at the height of his fame and had amassed a fortune in his sporting career.
He shot him four times through the closed bathroom door and, during the trial, unsuccessfully tried to defend that he panicked when he mistook Steenkamp for a burglar who had entered the apartment through the bathroom window. Born with a genetic problem that led his parents to decide to amputate both legs below the knees when he was 11 months old, Pistorius achieved world fame by running at the 2012 London Olympics on two carbon prostheses.
EFE
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