South Africa’s parole board has granted early release to Oscar Pistorius, the former athlete jailed for the 2013 murder of Reeva Steenkamp, who was his girlfriend.
Pistorius shot Steenkamp, a law graduate and model, through a bathroom door in their shared home in Pretoria on Valentine’s Day 10 years ago. He claimed he thought there was an intruder in the bathroom when he opened fire.
He will be released on 5 January after a parole board deemed him fit for social reintegration, South Africa’s correctional services department said on Friday. He has served eight and a half years in prison, plus a further eight months under house arrest.
Before Steenkamp’s murder, Pistorius was a national star feted for winning Paralympic medals and going on to become the first double amputee to race in the Olympics.
The killing made him infamous, and a long series of trials and appeals spurred international debate about gender-based violence and justice.
Steenkamp’s mother June had urged the parole board to “treat the safety of women as the most important consideration” in its deliberations, underlining that Pistorius has never accepted that he targeted Steenkamp.
“I do not believe Oscar’s version that he thought the person in the toilet was a burglar,” she wrote in a victim impact statement. “I do not know anybody who does. My dearest child screamed for her life, loud enough for the neighbours to hear her.
“I do not know what gave rise to his choice to shoot through a closed door four times with hollow-point ammunition when, I believe, he knew it was Reeva.”
She said she was not convinced Pistorius had been rehabilitated but that she would not oppose his release if officials decided otherwise.
Steenkamp’s father, Barry, died in September, and June did not attend Friday’s parole hearing, saying that after her husband’s death “I simply cannot muster the energy to face [Pistorius] again”.
Her statement was read to reporters, outside the prison where the parole hearing was held, by Rob Matthews, whose 21-year-old daughter was murdered in 2004 and who became a friend of the Steenkamp family.
In the initial 2014 trial, the judge found Pistorius guilty of the lesser crime of culpable homicide – comparable to manslaughter – ruling that there was no evidence he had wanted to kill Steenkamp.
That decision caused an outcry, with women’s rights groups warning it sent a dangerous message about the value of women’s lives.
After prosecutors appealed against the ruling, Pistorius was convicted of murder in the supreme court of appeal, on a legal principle known as dolus eventualis, which means he acted with extreme recklessness and should have known that whoever was behind the door would probably be killed.
He was initially sentenced to six years in prison, less than half the 15-year minimum term sought by prosecutors. In 2017, the supreme court ruled that sentence was “shockingly lenient” and raised it to 15 years, minus time already served.
Many activists fighting gender-based violence and intimate partner abuse say that sentence is still too short, and attacked the decision to grant parole to Pistorius.
“A terrible decision,” said criminal behavioural analyst Laura Richards in a post on X. She described a requirement that Pistorius attend anger management classes as “a joke. They have zero understanding of coercive control.”
Campaigner David Challen described it as “shameful”, also on X. “This is the value justice systems throughout the world put on the lives of women murdered by men.”
Pistorius, who turned 37 this week, was at the height of his fame when he killed Steenkamp. A double amputee below the knees from 11 months old, he was nicknamed the “blade runner” for the cutting-edge carbon-fibre prosthetics that he wore in races, and he converted his success into lucrative endorsement contracts and sponsorship deals.
At the trials, prosecutors argued there was another side to his life that involved guns, angry confrontations, and allegations of aggression towards women he had dated before Steenkamp. He was also found guilty of a charge of recklessly firing a gun in a restaurant.
He is expected to live at his uncle’s home in a wealthy Pretoria suburb where he stayed during his murder trial.
The parole will come with conditions over the five years until his sentence expires on 5 December 2029. These will include attending programmes on anger issues and violence against women, and completing community service.
He will not be able to leave Pretoria and will have to inform authorities of any major events in his life, including if he wants to move home or get a job, a corrections department spokesperson said.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report
