Shamed Paralympian Oscar Pistorius could win his freedom as prosecutors admit they blundered when refusing murderer's earlier bids for parole from jail sentence for shooting dead his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp

Oscar Pistorius could win his freedom after prosecutors admitted they made a blunder when refusing earlier bids for parole.

The double amputee, who ran in the London 2012 Olympic games, will have a fresh chance at an emergency parole hearing on Friday.

His family and lawyers are confident South African prosecutors will free him after he was gaoled for the shooting murder of model Reeva Steenkamp in 2013.

But if the gun-toting athlete known as 'Blade Runner' does win freedom, he will be kept under close protection in fear of revenge attacks from Johannesburg's underworld, as first revealed by Mail Online.

Pistorius, it is said, was wrongly ruled ineligible for early release from prison in March.

South Africa's department of corrections stated today a parole board will decide whether the inmate is suitable or not for social integration' on Friday.

Reeva's family, in an exclusive interview with Mail Online earlier this year at their home in Port Elizabeth, declared that their killer's daughter should remain behind bars.

Mr Barry Steenkamp, Reeva's father, passed away in September, but both he and his wife June, said they were against the murderer being freed.

Pistorius, a world-famous double-amputee athlete who broke barriers by competing on carbon-fiber running blades at the 2012 London Olympics, shot Reeva multiple times through a closed toilet cubicle door in his home in the South African capital, Pretoria, in the predawn hours of Valentine's Day 2013.

His conviction was upgraded to murderand he was ultimately sentenced to 13 years and five months in prison after a series of appeals by prosecutors.

Serious offenders in South Africa must serve at least half their sentence before they are eligible for parole.

Pistorius' case and his parole eligibility have been complicated by those appeals by prosecutors, who first challenged his culpable homicide conviction and then a sentence of six years for murder, which they called shockingly lenient.

The Supreme Court of Appeal eventually ruled in 2017 that Pistorius should serve South Africa's minimum sentence of 15 years for murder, but took into account the year and seven months he had already served for culpable homicide when it delivered the 13 years and five months sentence.

However, the court made an error by not counting another period Pistorius had served while his murder sentence was being appealed, meaning he was in fact eligible for parole in March when he was told at his first hearing that he would only be eligible in August 2024.

Pistorius' lawyers took his case to the country's apex Constitutional Court. The decision to give Pistorius another parole hearing on Friday is effectively an admission of the appeal court's error, it was reported.

Pistorius is not guaranteed to be granted early release. A parole board takes a number of factors into account, including his conduct and disciplinary record in prison, his mental health and the likelihood of him committing another crime.

He could be released on full parole or placed on day parole, where he would be allowed to live and work in the community but have to return to prison at night.

Pistorius was born with a congenital condition that led to his legs being amputated below the knee when he was a baby, but he took up track and won multiple Paralympic titles on his running blades. He is the only double amputee to run at the Olympics.

Known as the 'Blade Runner,' he was at the height of his fame when he killed Steenkamp months after the London Olympics. At his murder trial, he claimed he shot Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model, by mistake with his licensed 9 mm pistol because he believed she was a dangerous intruder hiding in his bathroom in the middle of the night.

Pistorius will turn 37 on Wednesday and has not been seen for nearly a decade, although there have been occasional glimpses of his time in prison.

Mr Steenkamp told MailOnline in February that he had met Pistorius after he was flown from Prison to a detention centre near their Port Elizabeth home.

He said he left unconvinced that his daughter's killer should win back his freedom.

'I was wasting my time. He is a murderer. He should remain in jail' he told MailOnline.

Mrs Steenkamp told why she refused to meet Pistorius and was even more damning of the shooter.

She said: 'I couldn't see myself going without hurting him. I didn't want to go to jail for attacking him. That would have been a great possibility. Things haven't got better. It gets worse as the time goes by because we miss Reeva every day that she is not here with us.

'It's very, very stressful that she couldn't spend our last days with us because he took her.

'Oscar has taken a lot away from us and from her. So now instead of getting upset, I get anger. I am angry with him. It is a horrible thing to say, but I can't stand him.'