Agencies
Pretoria, July 6: South African Paralympian Oscar Pistorius was sentenced Wednesday to six years in jail for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at his home three years ago.
High Court judge Thokozile Masipa listed several mitigating factors for sentencing him to less than half the minimum 15-year term for murder, including the athlete’s claim he believed he was shooting an intruder. “The sentence that I impose on the accused… is six years imprisonment,” she said.
Pistorius, 29, hugged his family before being taken out of the court here to begin serving his term. He can be a free man after three years.
The double-amputee Olympic and Paralympic sprinter was freed from prison last October after serving one year of a five-year term for culpable homicide – the equivalent of manslaughter. But an appeals court upgraded his conviction to murder in December.
Pistorius shot Steenkamp in the early hours of Valentine’s Day in 2013, saying he mistook her for a burglar when he fired four times through the door of his bedroom toilet.
The sentencing may not be the end of the long legal battle, as Pistorius or the state could launch a final round of appeals against the length of the prison term. A challenge to the Supreme Court of Appeal would be another blow to Masipa, who issued the original culpable homicide verdict that was later overturned.
“We are very disappointed… from five years that we fought against, and now it is six, what is that?” Jacqui Mofokeng, spokeswoman of the ruling ANC party’s women league, stated after the sentencing here. “It’s an insult to the women of South Africa.”
Many legal experts had earlier said they expected a term of between 11 and 14 years.
Pistorius, dressed in black tie, white shirt and black jacket, stared straight ahead in court during the televised proceedings, which were attended by his family and relatives of Steenkamp, a former law graduate and model.
