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JOHANNESBURG. — Oscar Pistorius spent his first night in a single cell in the hospital wing of a prison in Pretoria, said a prison official.
Pistorius seemed confused and tired when he entered the Kgosi Mampuru facility, prison commissioner Zebilon Monama told the Sapa.
Monama said Pistorius was tense as wardens took his fingerprints and the prison chaplain met with him soon after his prison number was issued on Tuesday.
“After he saw the chaplain, our psychologist went to see him just to try to talk to him,” said Monama.
Pistorius had a medical examination before being locked in his cell in a separate wing of the prison where the double amputee Paralympian joins eight other inmates with disabilities and will be under routine 24-hour observations with two nurses on duty.
“Now the hospital section of the centre accommodates two offenders with prosthetic legs, two blind offenders and five offenders on wheelchairs: Nine in total,” correctional services spokesperson Manelisi Wolela said in a statement.
Pistorius was sentenced to five years in prison on Tuesday after he was found guilty of culpable homicide for the shooting of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in the early morning hours of Valentine’s Day in 2013.
Throughout his trial and sentencing Pistorius maintained that he mistook the model and qualified lawyer for an intruder when he shot her through the bathroom door, with his defence arguing that the gold medalist’s physical disability had made him particularly paranoid.
South Africa’s prisons house an average of 128 disabled prisoners each year, less than 1 percent of the country’s total 157 000 prison population, according to the department of correctional services.
The country’s prisons came under scrutiny during Pistorius’s sentencing hearing as the defence team argued that conditions were unfit for persons with disabilities while the prosecutors maintained that the state had all the necessary facilities for physically impaired prisoners.
The celebrity athlete is required to serve a minimum of 10 months of his five-year sentence in a prison cell that activists describe as comfortable compared to the cells of able-bodied inmates.
During Pistorius’ sentencing hearing, prison officials assured the court that the athlete, who suffers from depression, will have access to his private therapist and physician if necessary.
Meanwhile, Reeva Steenkamp’s mother insisted she did not want “revenge” yesterday, the day after the disgraced athlete was handed a five-year jail term for shooting her daughter dead. June Steenkamp told British broadcaster ITV that she was “settled” with Pistorius’ sentence for killing Reeva, even though it could mean he is out of prison and under house arrest after 10 months.
Looking pale and holding her husband Barry’s hand, she added: “We don’t want revenge, we want a fair punishment under the circumstances on his disabilities.
“We wouldn’t have wanted him to go to jail and be abused and I feel that he will realise that he can’t go around doing that, he can’t kill someone like that.”
Prosecutors had argued that he murdered her in a fit of rage after an argument.
June said the family accepted the decision, despite indicating that some members were not “entirely happy”.
“We’re very settled with the sentence,” she added.
“We may not feel that justice has been done, but we have just got to accept what the judge decided.” — AP/AFP.
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