Oscar Pistorius to be released on parole in August

ByReuters

Updated 08/06/2015 at 18:56 GMT

South African athlete Oscar Pistorius will be released on parole on Aug. 21 after serving 10 months of a five-year sentence for culpable homicide of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, authorities said.

South African Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius looks on after his sentencing at the high court in Pretoria, on October 21, 2014.

Image credit: AFP

The Olympic and Paralympic track star is behind bars in the capital, Pretoria, after being convicted in October after a seven-month trial.

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"Oscar will be released on parole by the end of August," a Pistorius family member who did not want to be named told Reuters.

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Officials at South Africa's department of correctional services were not immediately available to comment.

The release of Pistorius, whose lower legs were amputated when he was a baby, was largely expected because he was sentenced under South African law to serve a short period of time in jail, or just one-sixth of the sentence.

Oscar Pistorius reacts as he sits in the dock during his trial for the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp (Reuters)

Pistorius is being held in South Africa's capital at the Pretoria Central Prison, once the execution site for opponents of South Africa's racist, white-minority government.

Steenkamp, a 29-year-old law graduate and model, died almost instantly on Valentine's Day in 2013 when Pistorius shot her through a locked toilet door at his luxury Pretoria home.

Prosecutors had pushed for a murder conviction, but the athlete maintained he fired in the mistaken belief an intruder was hiding behind the door, a defence that struck home in a country with one of the world's highest rates of violent crimes.

The prosecutors won their bid to appeal the culpable homicide conviction and will seek a murder conviction when their case is heard in November.

The decision could leave Pistorius open to a prison sentence of at least 15 years if he is convicted of murder.

A prison service statement said Pistorius would spend the remainder of his time under "correctional supervision", a form of house arrest.

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