johannesburg — Former Olympic runner and Paralympic gold medalist Oscar Pistorius is on probation. South Africa’s parole board met on Friday to decide whether Pistorius would be released from prison more than 10 years after he shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
The board will consider his conduct and disciplinary record in prison, his participation in educational or other training courses during the past decade of incarceration, and his mental and physical state to assess whether Pistorius, now 36, would still pose a security threat. public.
When Steenkamp’s mother, June, arrived for her parole hearing on Friday, she was asked if she thought Pistorius was sorry.
“No. Never,” he said. “It’s very difficult to be in the same room with him.”
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Steenkamp’s parents would address the parole board to voice their opposition to Pistorius’s early parole being granted.
“We don’t believe his story,” June Steenkamp told reporters as her car pulled up at the Atteridgeville Correctional Center in Pretoria on Friday.
The 2014 murder trial kept viewers around the world glued to the live stream of the courtroom as prosecutors argued that the elite athlete had deliberately shot his girlfriend through a locked bathroom door with key in the middle of the night.
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Pistorius maintained throughout that it was a terrible accident and that he had mistaken Steenkamp for an intruder. Ultimately, he was convicted of murder after prosecutors successfully appealed an initial conviction for manslaughter, which is comparable to manslaughter. He was sentenced to 13 years and five months in prison in 2017, which took into account just over a year that he had already served during the appeals process.
Social workers have already inspected his uncle Arno Pistorius’ property in Pretoria, which is where he would serve the remainder of his sentence if paroled.
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Terms of probation vary in South Africa, but could include an electronic tag to monitor your movements and a ban on earning money from media interviews about your imprisonment.
Pistorius was last on parole in 2021, but his application was denied on technical grounds as he had did not meet with Steenkamp’s family as required by South African parole rules. That meeting has since taken place, but Steenkamp’s parents are not convinced that Pistorius has taken responsibility for his actions.
Steenkamp’s mother had indicated before Friday that she, along with her husband, would oppose Pistorius’s early release, arguing that unless he admits he deliberately killed his daughter, he cannot be seen as having shown remorse.
The year before the murder, Pistorius was a star at the London Olympics, achieving worldwide recognition for becoming the first double amputee to compete against able-bodied sprinters. His prowess with the twin carbon fiber prosthetics earned him the nickname “Blade Runner.”
