Pistorius to face two firearm charges
1 Nov 2013 4:36 AM IST
Pistorius now faces charges of murder, illegal possession of ammunition and two other counts of breaking South Africa’s firearms laws in his trial in March.
Pistorius’ lawyers received a letter on Tuesday advising them that the two charges, already raised against Pistorius, would be added to the indictment served on the athlete in August, National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Nathi Mncube told The Associated Press.
Pistorius’ lawyers failed in an initial application opposing the inclusion of the two charges in his murder trial but can ‘take the matter up’ again, Mncube said.
Mncube said the additional charges were not in the original indictment because they are alleged to have occurred in the Johannesburg region, a different court jurisdiction to Pistorius’ fatal shooting of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at his villa in a gated estate in the South African capital, Pretoria, in the pre-dawn hours of 14 February.
Prosecutors had to seek permission from South Africa’s new National Director of Public Prosecutions to ‘centralize’ all the charges, Mncube said, so they all could be heard in the same trial at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria. ‘The National Director has indeed given them (prosecutors) that authority and they will be added,’ Mncube said. ‘They are not new charges, they were charges that already existed. They were just in a different jurisdiction.’ Pistorius’ murder trial is due to start on 3 March and the 26-year-old disabled runner faces a life sentence with a minimum of 25 years in prison if he is convicted on the main charge of premeditated murder in the killing of Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day. Mncube declined to detail the charges being added, only saying there were two counts and they covered ‘the contravention of the firearms control act.’ The South African media has reported that Pistorius has twice shot a gun in a public place: One time out of a moving car when he was driving with a former girlfriend and another at a restaurant in Johannesburg when he apparently accidentally fired a friend’s gun under a table while admiring it.
Pistorius’ lawyers received a letter on Tuesday advising them that the two charges, already raised against Pistorius, would be added to the indictment served on the athlete in August, National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Nathi Mncube told The Associated Press.
Pistorius’ lawyers failed in an initial application opposing the inclusion of the two charges in his murder trial but can ‘take the matter up’ again, Mncube said.
Mncube said the additional charges were not in the original indictment because they are alleged to have occurred in the Johannesburg region, a different court jurisdiction to Pistorius’ fatal shooting of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at his villa in a gated estate in the South African capital, Pretoria, in the pre-dawn hours of 14 February.
Prosecutors had to seek permission from South Africa’s new National Director of Public Prosecutions to ‘centralize’ all the charges, Mncube said, so they all could be heard in the same trial at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria. ‘The National Director has indeed given them (prosecutors) that authority and they will be added,’ Mncube said. ‘They are not new charges, they were charges that already existed. They were just in a different jurisdiction.’ Pistorius’ murder trial is due to start on 3 March and the 26-year-old disabled runner faces a life sentence with a minimum of 25 years in prison if he is convicted on the main charge of premeditated murder in the killing of Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day. Mncube declined to detail the charges being added, only saying there were two counts and they covered ‘the contravention of the firearms control act.’ The South African media has reported that Pistorius has twice shot a gun in a public place: One time out of a moving car when he was driving with a former girlfriend and another at a restaurant in Johannesburg when he apparently accidentally fired a friend’s gun under a table while admiring it.
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