Former Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius will be freed from jail on parole on January 5, 2024, nearly 11 years after he shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
Oscar, now 37, claimed he mistook Steenkamp for a burglar when he fired multiple times through a bathroom door on Valentine’s Day in 2013.
He was convicted of murder in 2016 and sentenced to 13 years in prison by a South African court.
The parole board granted his release after a hearing on Friday at Atteridgeville prison, near Pretoria, where Oscar is serving his sentence.
The board said Pistorius had shown remorse and had participated in rehabilitation programmes.
Steenkamp’s mother, June, did not oppose the parole but expressed doubts about Pistorius’s anger management and his potential threat to other women.
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In a letter to the parole board, she said she wondered whether Pistorius’s “huge anger issues” were truly dealt with in prison, adding she would potentially be “concerned for the safety of any woman” who now comes into contact with him.
June Steenkamp did not attend the parole hearing. She said the strain on her and her husband, Barry, who died earlier this year, had been immense.
She also said she hoped Pistorius would use his freedom to do some good in the world.This was Pistorius’s second parole bid in under a year.
His first attempt was rejected in March because he had not completed the minimum detention period.
That decision was later overturned by South Africa’s Constitutional Court, leading to Friday’s parole hearing.
Pistorius, who had both legs amputated below the knee as a baby, was a star athlete who competed in both the Olympics and the Paralympics. He was known as the “Blade Runner” for his carbon-fibre prosthetic legs.
His fall from grace shocked the world and tarnished his image as a role model for disabled people.