Oscar Pistorius now has the right to request provisional release | Video

The South African athlete Oscar Pistoriusconvicted of murdering his girlfriend, the model, in 2013 Reeva Steenkamp, can opt for conditional freedom, issued this Monday Constitutional Court of South Africa.

Pistorius had requested the Constitutional Court to declared eligible for parole, after this was denied last March.

The 36-year-old athlete argued that has unfairly increased his prison time so much as the minimum required to qualify for that measure, which represents a “violation” of their "Fundamental rights".

Pistorius asked in 2022 to Pretoria High Court to order the holding of a parole hearing, by maintaining that he had fulfilled more than half of his sentencea requirement of South African law to be a candidate for that measure.

Convicted murderer Oscar Pistorius has been eligible for parole for six months. This was confirmed by the Constitutional Court, which found that he served half his term by March. Journalist Karyn Maughan has more on why he has not been released.

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But on March 31, the parole board concluded that ““The inmate did not complete the minimum detention period.” and marked August 2024 for another deliberation process.

However, the Constitutional Court confirmed this Monday that “no later than March 21, 2023 the plaintiff had fulfilled the half of his sentence.”

In response to the ruling, Department of Correctional Services (DCS) spokesperson, Singabakho Nxumaloconfirmed that this institution “has received an order from the Constitutional Court regarding the proper interpretation of the ruling of the Supreme Court of Appeals (on Pistorius' sentence) handed down on November 24, 2017″.

“The matter concerns the sentence handed down to the prisoner Oscar Leonard Pistorius its date of entry into force and its impact on the calculation of the minimum detention period. The DCS is studying the order and will rule on the way forward in due course. This will ensure that the court order is properly executed,” he added.

After a trial that garnered worldwide media attention, Pistorius was initially sentenced in October 2014 to five years in prison. for reckless homicide, when considering justice that extenuating circumstances existed, but the The Prosecutor's Office appealed the ruling.

In November 2015, The South African Supreme Court of Appeal overturned that conviction. and declared it guilty of murderreferring the case back to the court of first instance which, in July 2016sentenced Pistorius to six years in prison for murder.

However, after another appeal from the Prosecutor's Officethe Supreme Court of Appeal increased the sentence in November 2017 to 15 years, the minimum contemplated by law in cases of murder except in exceptional situations.

That date, 2017, was the one that Supreme Court of Appeal was finally taken into account as a starting point to determine last March that the athlete He had not reached half of his sentence.

In practice, that ruling meant 13 years and five months in prison, by discounting the time that Pistorius - who spent a period in release on bail and under house arrest– had already remained in prison.

Pistorius is serving time for having Steenkamp shot dead in his house Pretoria Valentine's Day 2013, when he was at the peak of his fame and had amassed a fortune in his sporting career.

He shot him four times through the closed bathroom door and, during the trial, tried unsuccessfully to argue that panicked when he mistook Steenkamp for a thief who would have entered the home through the bathroom window.

Born with a genetic problem that led his parents to decide amputate both legs below the knees when I was 11 months oldPistorius achieved worldwide fame running in the London Olympicsin 2012, about two carbon prostheses.

(With information from EFE)