Oscar: Reeva would want me to seek redemption not 'waste my life' behind bars

Oscar Pistorius has admitted he deserves a long jail sentence for killing Reeva Steenkamp but vehemently denied he murdered her, insisting that the 2013 shooting was not premeditated.

In his first TV interview since his girlfriend’s death, Pistorius said he “couldn’t disagree” with those who felt he should be punished. “At times I don’t feel like I should have the right to live for taking someone else’s life. What’s difficult is dealing with the charge of murder,” he said.

Pistorius made the comments during an interview with ITV, to be broadcast at 9pm on Friday. The interview – at times frank, at other points self-exculpatory, and with moments of prolonged sobbing and even howling – comes days before a South African judge will sentence Pistorius for murder.

He was convicted in 2014 of manslaughter, but last year the conviction was upgraded to murder following an appeal by state prosecutors. The minimum sentence for murder in South Africa is 15 years. However, legal experts say judge Thokozile Masipa has considerable powers of discretion.

Pistorius said he arrived home just after 6pm to find Reeva “smiling and giddy and just bubbly”. She had cooked a romantic meal and laid the table with a candle. After, they lay down on the bed and chatted, he said, adding that “when I came in the room I placed my firearm on the left hand side of the bed”.

South Africa’s supreme court was unimpressed by Pistorius’s testimony, describing him as vacillating, untruthful and a “very poor witness”. Masipa, who heard his original trial, has further described him as “evasive” and “clearly not candid”.

The athlete said he owned nine to 11 firearms, and had ordered a semi-automatic assault rifle, but added that he kept only his 9mm gun at home. Asked why he needed such an arsenal, Pistorius said that like all South Africans he had direct and traumatic personal experience of violent crime.