{"id":9224,"date":"2013-08-16T07:20:31","date_gmt":"2013-08-16T07:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=9224"},"modified":"2013-08-16T07:20:31","modified_gmt":"2013-08-16T07:20:31","slug":"oscar-pistorius-due-back-in-the-dock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=9224","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Pistorius due back in the dock"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Oscar<\/a>
Oscar Pistoirus during a previous court hearing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

South African double-amputee Olympian Oscar Pistorius will return to court Monday, when he is expected to be indicted for murdering lover Reeva Steenkamp and receive a date for trial.<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old sprinter will appear in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court six months after shooting dead girlfriend Steenkamp in the toilet of his upscale home.<\/p>\n

The platinum blonde cover girl and law graduate died on Valentine’s Day after being shot in the head, elbow and hip.<\/p>\n

She would have turned 30 on Monday, when prosecutors are expected to unveil a five-page indictment against Pistorius for premeditated murder, according to sources close to the investigation.<\/p>\n

The hearing is expected to be brief, and according to Pistorius family spokeswoman Anneliese Burgess the “chances are very high that a trial date will be set.”<\/p>\n

Pistorius, who is out on bail and faces a life sentence if found guilty, has denied murder, saying he shot Steenkamp through a locked bathroom door because he believed she was an intruder.<\/p>\n

The trial is not expected to start until 2014, given the backlog in South Africa’s regional high courts.<\/p>\n

A single senior judge will hear the case. South Africa does not have a jury system.<\/p>\n

The indictment could detail key aspects of the police investigation into Steenkamp’s death that came under scrutiny during a lengthy bail hearing.<\/p>\n

These may include ballistics information from the bathroom door suggesting Pistorius’s height at the time of the shooting.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors assert he donned his two prosthetic legs before firing four shots through the bathroom door, a delay they say proves the murder was premeditated.<\/p>\n

The athlete, who was born without calf bones and had both legs amputated below the knee when he was 11 months old, claims he was on his stumps.<\/p>\n

The indictment could also shed light on phone records from four cell phones found outside the room where Steenkamp had locked herself in.<\/p>\n

Investigators had to contact mobile manufacturer Apple in the United States as well as Interpol to access one of the phones, Pistorius’s iPhone 5.<\/p>\n

The athlete apparently could not remember the four-digit pass code to unlock the phone, according to media reports.<\/p>\n

South Africa’s much-maligned police force is under immense pressure to help secure a conviction, after the bail hearing showed up shoddy police work that led to the whole investigation team being replaced.<\/p>\n

Police failed to find all the bullets fired, potentially contaminated the crime scene and misjudged the distance to the spot from which a witness claimed to have heard shouting earlier in the night.<\/p>\n

Pistorius, who runs on two fibre-glass prosthetic legs, catapulted to fame as the first double-amputee to compete against able-bodied athletes at last year’s London Olympics.<\/p>\n

But since the February shooting his reckless past of fast cars, beautiful women and fascination with guns has emerged.<\/p>\n

He was released on bail of one million rand ($101,000, 76,000 euros) a week after killing Steenkamp.<\/p>\n

After withdrawing from international athletic events, Pistorius restarted light training for “mental and emotional equilibrium”, his family said in June.<\/p>\n

After an initial silence, Steenkamp’s parents lashed out at him, speaking of quarrels their daughter had with the athlete in their five-month relationship.<\/p>\n

He broke down several times in court during the February bail hearing and family members have spoken openly about his trauma.<\/p>\n

The killing sent shock waves around the world and halted his stellar career, ending lucrative endorsement deals with US sportswear giant Nike and French cosmetic firm Clarins.<\/p>\n

Pistorius also reportedly was fined one million rand for undeclared taxes.<\/p>\n

In the months following his release the sprinter has kept a low profile.<\/p>\n

But he has been spotted in public a few times, most recently while kayaking last Sunday in harbour town Hermanus east of Cape Town.<\/p>\n

“He had to get out of this jail,” his uncle Arnold Pistorius told Afrikaans-language Beeld newspaper, referring to the athlete’s seclusion. – Sapa-AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South African double-amputee Olympian Oscar Pistorius will return to court Monday, when he is expected to be indicted for murdering lover Reeva Steenkamp and receive a date for trial. The 26-year-old sprinter will appear in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court six months after shooting dead girlfriend Steenkamp in the toilet of his upscale home. The platinum … Continue reading “Oscar Pistorius due back in the dock”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[5193,840,1266,5191,5192,2547],"class_list":["post-9224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-amputee","tag-athlete","tag-court","tag-pistorius","tag-pretoria-magistrates-court","tag-reeva-steenkamp"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Oscar-Pistorius-stands-following-his-bail-hearing-in-Pretoria.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9229,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9224\/revisions\/9229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}