North West commissioner of correctional services Lunga Tseana is studying a parole board report that could lead to Eugene Terre’Blanche being freed from jail early.
The Pretoria High Court last month ordered that the department reconsider an earlier unsuccessful application by Terre’Blanche (58) to be released under correctional supervision.
Terre’Blanche is serving what is in effect a five-year sentence at Rooigrond prison for trying to murder former security guard Paul Motshabi in 1996. Motshabi was left permanently disabled.
North West correctional services representative Sarie Peens said on Tuesday she was unable confirm a news report quoting Terre’Blanche’s lawyer Gerrie Basson as saying the provincial parole board had given the nod for correctional supervision.
She said commissioner Tseana received the board’s report — ”quite a thick document” — late Monday afternoon, and was still studying its recommendation.
Tseana would make her own recommendation, which would go back to the board and then to the Potchefstroom Magistrate’s Court where he was originally sentenced.
”The court will make a decision on what we have recommended,” Peens said.
”If the provincial commissioner recommends that he can go out then the court will have to say, let’s look at all the facts, and the court can consider having his sentence changed from a prison sentence to correctional supervision.”
She said the Potchefstroom magistrate had considered, and ruled out, supervision as an appropriate sentence.
”Now the court has to reconsider that decision with our inputs,” she said.
”This is not going to happen today…. This can take another week.”
Peens said Terre’Blanche would normally have been considered for parole in September or November next year. – Sapa