After killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, over 11 years ago, former Paralympic champion, Oscar Pistorius is set to be released from prison on parole.
On Valentine’s Day in 2013, Pistorius shot Ms. Steenkamp several times through a bathroom door and subsequently claimed that he thought that she was a burglar at their Pretoria home.
The Paralympic, now 37, was then sentenced by a South African court in 2016 to serve 13 years and five months in prison.
The parole board has set his release for 5 January 2024.
The Department of Correctional Services, on Friday, said once released, he (Pistorius) will be monitored by the authorities until his sentence officially expires “just like all other parolees.
Also, the Steenkamp family’s spokesman noted that he will also have to attend therapy sessions.
In a letter read out to the parole board during Friday’s hearing, Ms Steenkamp’s mother said she did not oppose his release but wondered whether Pistorius’s “huge anger issues” were truly dealt with in prison.
She added that she would be “concerned for the safety of any woman” who now comes into contact with him.
June Steenkamp chose not to attend the parole hearing at Atteridgeville prison, near the capital, Pretoria, saying: “I simply cannot muster the energy to face him again at this stage.”
This was Pistorius’s second parole hearing in under a year, with the first in March which was struck out because he had not completed the minimum detention period.
That was later ruled a mistake by South Africa’s Constitutional Court, leading to Friday’s parole hearing.
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