This is according to the family’s legal representative
Tania Koen, who said the decision to amend the ruling on the paralympian’s
sentence could not have come at a worse time, with the anniversary of
Steenkamp’s death coming up soon.
Steenkamp was shot and killed on Valentine’s Day in 2013 by
Pistorius after he fired four times through the door of his bedroom toilet
where she was. Pistorius has continued to maintain that he allegedly mistook
her for a burglar.
Koen said the decision had left Steenkamp’s parents June
and Barry Steenkamp frustrated and sad, even though they understood that
everyone makes mistakes.
Pistorius’s father Henke Pistorius said the main thing for
him was that he understood that parole was a privilege and not a right and he
was convinced his son had more than met the requirements to be granted parole.
However, he did stress that the decision about whether to
release Oscar lay with the Department of Correctional Services.
“I trust the department to look at his position in a favourable
light. Oscar has done great things in his life, and I always tell him that he
will still do more great things after he is released from prison.”
The Supreme Court of Appeal has amended its decision to
increase his sentence after it admitted to an error of not taking into account
the 506 days Pistorius had already served for his girlfriend’s murder.
But the Department of Correctional Services said that at
this stage the department would not confirm a date for Pstorius’s parole.
The reason for this, departmental spokesperson Singabakho
Nxumalo said, was because there were certain processes that had to be followed.
“All inmates in South Africa become eligible for parole
consideration after serving the minimum required time. This, however, does not
guarantee parole placement but a privilege that must be earned following our
prescripts and ultimately the inmate’s readiness for social reintegration.”
Pistorius was initially found guilty of culpable homicide,
but when he appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeal in 2015 that was changed to
murder.
In December 2017, Pistorius turned to the Constitutional
Court seeking to overturn the higher prison sentence handed down by the Appeals
Court in November of the same year.
The Supreme Court had increased his sentence by 13 years
and five months, more than doubling the sentence from the six years he
initially received for the shooting.
Pretoria News
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