Pistorius faces return to jail for lover’s murder

Johannesburg/ AFP

Disgraced South African Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius will appear in court on Monday for a sentencing hearing set to send him back to jail for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp three years ago. The double-amputee killed Steenkamp, a model and law graduate, in the early hours of Valentine’s Day 2013, saying he mistook her for an intruder when he fired four times through the door of his bedroom toilet.
In March, Pistorius’s lawyers failed in their legal bid to reverse a Supreme Court of Appeal judgement that upgraded his original conviction from culpable homicide to murder.
He was released from jail last October to live under house arrest at his uncle’s mansion in Pretoria after serving one year of his five-year sentence for culpable homicide.
Since being convicted of murder, he has been on bail and allowed to leave the house at set times, but not travel further than 20 kilometres without permission.
The 29-year-old “Blade Runner” faces a minimum 15-year jail term for murder, but his sentence could be reduced due to time already spent in prison and mitigating factors, including his disability. “He has served one year in prison and has been effectively on probation or correctional supervision,” Stephan Terblanche, a law professor at the University of South Africa, said.