More charges added in Pistorius court case

Oct 29, 2013 | 6:05 PM |by SAPA 

Two additional firearm charges have been added to the Oscar Pistorius murder trial. Pistorius is due to go to court in March next year.

Gallo Images

Pistorius is due to go to court in March next year for the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp and the illegal possession of ammunition.

Now prosecutors believe that the additional charges which relate to the reckless firing of guns in public, will strengthen the case against the double-amputee athlete

National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Nathi Mncube told The Associated Press that Pistorius's lawyers received a letter on Tuesday advising them that the charges would be added and that Pistorius would have to face them at his trial next year.

Mncube said the additional charges were already raised against Pistorius but were not in the original indictment served to him in August because these offenses are alleged to have occurred in the Johannesburg region, a different court jurisdiction to Pistorius's fatal shooting of Steenkamp in Pretoria, on Febuary 14.

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.

Mncube declined to detail the charges, only saying that there were two additional counts and they covered "the contravention of the firearm controls act."

No word from Pistorius family on new charges

Pistorius's spokeswoman Anneliese Burgess told the AP that the Pistorius family did not want to comment on "legal aspects" of the case while a member of Pistorius's legal team did not immediately answer telephone calls from the AP.

There have been media reports that Pistorius had twice shot a gun in a public place: One 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.

The National Prosecuting Authority would not comment on any of the details surrounding the two charges to be added, but people who are believed to have been present at the two incidents were included in the prosecution's list of more than 100 witnesses when Pistorius was indicted just over two months ago.

Pistorius could spend the rest of his life behind bars

The 26-year-old Olympic 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 shooting death of Steenkamp in the pre-dawn hours of Valentine's Day.

Pistorius denies murder and says he shot Steenkamp in self-defence through a toilet door with his licenced 9mm handgun, thinking mistakenly that she was a dangerous intruder in his upscale Pretoria villa. Prosecutors believe he intended to kill her, possibly after a loud argument in the middle of the night.