Oscar Pistorius will not be released from jail early

Oscar Pistorius will not be released from prison early after he appealed to the parole board over his sentence for shooting his girlfriend dead 10 years ago.

The former Olympic runner was denied parole Friday after it was decided that he had not served the “minimum detention period” required to be released.

Pistorius, a double-amputee and multiple Paralympic running champion, is serving 13 years and 5 months for the Valentine's Day 2013 murder of Reeva Steenkamp in his home in South Africa.He has always claimed he shot his girlfriend in error after mistaking her for a dangerous intruder.

The runner said he didn't realise she got out of bed and went to the bathroom.

But her parents, Barry and June Steenkamp, believe he killed her intentionally in anger during a late-night argument.

Pistorius fired four shots with his licensed 9mm pistol through a toilet cubicle door in his upscale Pretoria villa to kill the 29-year-old model and reality TV star.

The now-36-year-old, was eligible for parole after having serve half his sentence but this has been refused.

The parole board ruled Pistorius would be able to apply again in August 2024, South Africa's Department of Corrections said in a statement.

The board cited a new clarification on Pistorius' sentence that was issued by South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal three days ago, according to the statement.

Serious offenders must serve at least half their sentence to be eligible for parole in South Africa.

Pistorius has served more than seven years, taking into account time served from late 2014 while his initial manslaughter conviction was overturned after an appeal by the prosecution and replaced with murder.

The result was received as a surprise, but there has been legal wrangling over when Pistorius should be eligible for parole because of the series of appeals in his case.

He was initially convicted of culpable homicide, a charge comparable to manslaughter, in 2014 but the case went through a number of appeals before Pistorius was finally sentenced to 13 years and five months in prison for murder in 2017.

Reeva Steenkamp's father and mother speak to ITV's Good Morning Britain a decade after their daughter's murder

There have been glimpses of his life in prison, with reports claiming he had at one point grown a beard, gained weight, taken up smoking and was unrecognisable from the world-famous athlete he once was.

He has spent much of his time working in an area of the prison grounds where vegetables are grown, sometimes driving a tractor, and has reportedly been running bible classes for other inmates.

However, Pistorius sustained an injury in an altercation with another inmate over a public telephone at the prison in 2017.

A year earlier, he received treatment for injuries to his wrists, which his family denied were caused by him harming himself and were a result of him falling in his cell.

If Pistorius had been released, he was expected to live at his uncle's mansion in the Pretoria suburbs. He lived there under house arrest for a time during his murder trial.

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