24 November 2023 , 11:38
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Olympian and double amputee Oscar Pistorius has today been told he will be freed after serving nine years for the murder of his girlfriend and model Reeva Steenkamp.
The now 37-year-old killed his girlfriend on Valentine's Day, 2013, and was sentenced to 13 years and five months in custody after his conviction was upgraded to murder - he was originally jailed for just five years though this was later increased. Pistorius has since made multiple bids for parole, which have been rejected. However, he was granted a second chance at parole at a hearing in Johannesburg earlier this week, after being wrongly ruled ineligible for early release in March.
He will now be freed in January next year. The disgraced Paralympic sprinter, known as the Blade Runner, shot girlfriend Reeva dead at his home in Pretoria, South Africa. The Mirror was given exclusive details of Pistorius’s life in Atteridgeville prison – a low-security site that has been described as “comfy”. One jail source said: “Pistorius remains muscular and fit. He has been seen driving a red tractor in fields around the prison, being trained to plough a straight furrow.
Oscar Pistorius and his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp (AFP/Getty Images)“The produce of the agriculture, including cauliflower, is then sold to help feed poverty-stricken schoolchildren.” One official who saw Pistorius, 37, said he was a model inmate but added: “You can never tell if a prisoner is just putting on an act until he is released. Much depends on how much he’s been concealing his true feelings and whether he has worked through them.”
Pistorius – who had both legs amputated under the knee as a baby – will have served nine years of a 15-year sentence for model Reeva’s murder. Although Reeva's mum June opposes her daughter's killer being set free, she was not be in court for the hearing today after the death of Reeva's father Barry in September. In a heartbreaking statement she said: "I am not attending Oscar’s parole hearing, as I simply cannot muster the energy to face him again at this stage.
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"Barry’s demise had opened the wounds in many ways caused by Reeva’s death. I had forgiven Oscar long ago, as I knew almost instantly that I would not be able to survive if I had to cling to my anger. I do not believe Oscar’s version that he thought the person in the toilet was a burglar. In fact, I do not know anybody who does. My dearest child screamed for her life; loud enough for the neighbours to hear her. I do not know what gave rise to his choice to shoot through a closed door four times at somebody with hollow-point ammunition when I believe, he knew it was Reeva."