A South African appeal court has more than doubled the former Paralympian Oscar Pistorius’s prison sentence for murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
The supreme court of appeal (SCA) increased Pistorius’s sentence from six years in prison to 13 years and five months.
Pistorius killed Steenkamp, a model and law graduate, by firing four bullets from a handgun through a closed toilet door in his luxury home in Pretoria on Valentine’s Day 2013. He claimed he had mistaken her for a burglar.
Steenkamp’s family welcomed the longer sentence and said it showed that justice could prevail in South Africa. “This is an emotional thing for them. They just feel that their trust in the justice system has been confirmed this morning,” Tania Koen, a spokeswoman for the Steenkamp family, said on Friday.
The SCA said Pistorius “displays a lack of remorse, and does not appreciate the gravity of his actions”.