Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee Olympic runner who shot his girlfriend to death on Valentine’s Day 2013, can leave prison and move to house arrest next week, South Africa’s Department of Corrections said on Thursday.
A parole board at the prison where Pistorius has served nearly a year of his five-year sentence for manslaughter made the decision. It came after an initial ruling to release the athlete in August was canceled at the last minute after intervention by the justice minister.
This time, the board “approved the placement of offender Oscar Pistorius under correctional supervision as from 20 October 2015,” the corrections department said in a statement following the meeting of the parole board earlier on Thursday.
The appeal will come just two weeks after Pistorius is freed next Tuesday. If Pistorius is convicted of murder by a panel of five judges at the appeal, he faces going back to prison for 15 years, the minimum sentence for murder in South Africa, which no longer has the death penalty.
Pistorius will now be moved to correctional supervision, a form of house arrest, where he will have to live under certain conditions for the next four years. His sentence ends on Oct. 20, 2019.
Pistorius has been informed of those conditions, the corrections department said, although it did not detail them all. It did say that Pistorius would have to continue receiving psychotherapy while under house arrest and would not be allowed to handle any firearms. The 28-year-old Pistorius is expected to serve his house arrest at his uncle’s mansion in an upmarket suburb of Pretoria.