Oscar Pistorius will not be released from prison on Friday

Justice department spokesman Mthunzi Mhaga said the board made their decision before the athlete was even eligible for parole. It entitles the parole board to place the prisoner on corrective supervision at the one-sixth mark of a sentence – in his case, 10 months into his five-year sentence.

Friday is 10 months to the day after Pistorius was sentenced, and the prison parole board, when it announced its decision in June, believed Pistorius would therefore be eligible to transfer at that moment.

The minister said he had received a petition from the Progressive Women’s Movement of South Africa opposing Pistorius’ release on parole, saying it flouted the rules. The group especially criticized Pistorius’ release during August, which is women’s month in South Africa and a time when issues including domestic violence against women are highlighted.

Masutha stressed that he was not in a position to make a decision to “approve or disapprove the CSPBs’ decision” except in the case of offenders serving life sentences.

Pistorius testified that he shot Steenkamp after mistaking her for a harmful intruder hiding in his toilet.

During his trial Pistorius, 28, was seen clasping rosary beads and intensively reading the book Breakthrough Prayer: The Power of Connecting with the Heart of God, by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Church’s pastor Jim Cymbal.

The paralympian shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on the night of Valentine’s Day in 2013, shooting four times with a large caliber weapon on the door of the bathroom where she was. “For me they have made a boo-boo, I tell you”.

However, justice minister Michael Masutha called the release into house arrest “premature”.

Pistorius, 29, a former Paralympic gold medallist, was due after his planned release on Friday to spend the balance of his sentence at his uncle’s three-storey mansion in a leafy suburb of South Africa’s capital Pretoria. But they say he’s since changed dramatically. It has been sent back to the parole board for review, which means that Oscar Pistorius remains in prison. Pistorius won’t hit the 10-month mark until this Friday, meaning a decision can’t be made on moving the runner to house arrest until that date.

Masutha, who oversees the justice and correctional services departments, was “considering” the petition, the justice department said.

Family lawyer Tania Koen told The Associated Press that Steenkamp’s parents, Barry and June, are concentrating this week on marking what would have been their daughter’s 32nd birthday on Wednesday.