By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Department of Correctional Services (DCS) has confirmed that disgraced South African Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius has been denied parole.
The parole board ordered Pistorius should remain behind bars after it found he had yet to spend the required time behind bars to qualify for parole.
The department said the Correctional Supervision and Parole Board (CSPB) “granted inmate Pistorius a further profile for August 2024. The reason provided is that the inmate did not complete the minimum Detention Period as ruled by the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) (as per the clarification provided on 28 March 2023)”.
The board considered his conduct and disciplinary record in prison, his participation in educational or other training courses during the last decade of incarceration, and his mental and physical state to assess whether Pistorius, now 36, would still pose a threat to public safety.
He will be able to reapply for parole in August 2024.
As Reeva Steenkamp’s mother June arrived Friday at the parole hearing, she was asked if she believed Pistorius was remorseful.
“No. Never,” she said. “It’s very hard to be in the same room as him.”
Steenkamp’s parents were expected to address the parole board, which met behind closed doors, to voice their opposition to Pistorius being granted early parole.
“We don’t believe his story,” June Steenkamp told reporters as her car pulled into the Atteridgeville Correctional Centre in Pretoria on Friday.
The 2014 murder trial kept viewers around the world glued to the live courtroom broadcast as prosecutors argued that the elite athlete had deliberately shot his girlfriend through a locked bathroom door in the middle of the night.
Pistorius maintained throughout that it was a terrible accident and that he had mistaken Steenkamp for an intruder. He was ultimately convicted of murder after prosecutors successfully appealed an initial conviction for culpable homicide, 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 he had already served during the appeal process.