Nervous days for Oscar as NPA ponders next move
MURDERER Oscar Pistorius is unlikely to return to the comfort of his old cell at Pretoria’s Kgosi Mampuru II Prison once he has been sentenced.
The Olympic athlete’s cell at the prison’s hospital wing had been allocated to another inmate, it was confirmed yesterday by Logan Maistry, a deputy commissioner at the Department of Correctional Services.
“It wasn’t a cell for Pistorius. We use it for any inmate,” he said.
The department recently gave journalists a tour of the prison during which they were shown the tiny cubicle where Pistorius spent almost a year after being jailed for culpable homicide for shooting dead his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentine’s Day in 2013.
A bed covered with a blue sheet, a small cabinet and a kitchen sink could be seen in the tiny cell — the department was adamant Pistorius had enjoyed no special perks.
Now, as the Blade Runner nervously awaits sentencing for murder after the Supreme Court of Appeal upgraded his conviction, he is “terrified” of returning to prison.
His friend, boxer Kevin Lerena, told the UK’s Daily Mail that Pistorius had told him in a phone call that jail was “a terrible place” and “so disgusting”.
Lerena, a state witness during Pistorius’s trial, was quoted as saying: “I don’t even want to think about what is going to happen to him if he goes back. I don’t think he will be able to handle it.”
Pistorius was briefly spotted outside his family’s Waterkloof mansion on Friday morning when he drove up in a white BMW to drop off an unidentified young woman.
Maistry said the department was yet to receive a warrant of exe cution from a court for Pistorius.
Maistry said the status quo concerning Pistorius’s correctional supervision would continue until new instructions had been received from the court.
National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Luvuyo Mfaku confirmed yesterday that the NPA was trying to secure a date for Pistorius to appear in court so that the matter could be postponed for sentencing.
Mfaku denied media reports that a warrant of arrest had been issued for Pistorius. Pistorius’s lawyers have yet to comment on the Supreme Court of Appeal’s verdict, but they are expected to bring an application for him to be released on bail until the sentencing proceedings have been concluded.
Asked if the state would oppose bail when Pistorius next appeared in court, Mfaku said: “We do not discuss legal issues before the appearance of the accused in court. We are operating within the framework of human rights.”
Legal experts who have monitored the case indicated this week that Pistorius, who exhausted his finances during his trial, could, as a last resort, head to the Constitutional Court on the grounds that his right to a fair trial had been infringed.
This would be in view of the trial having been broadcast live.
Trial commentator attorney Ulrich Roux said: ‘‘He could argue that his rights were infringed as a result of the trial being broadcast all over the world.” But, he said, he would be sceptical about such an approach being successful as Judge Dunstan Mlambo, in ruling on the media application to have the trial broadcast, ‘‘rightly” balanced the interests of society against the rights of Pistorius.
‘‘I won’t be surprised if one [a Constitutional Court case] is launched. We’ve seen absolutely everything in this trial,” Roux said. — Additional reporting by Pericles Anetos
I don’t want to think about what will happen to him. He won’t be able to handle it