Oscar Pistorius faces two further firearm charges

Remember the famed South African blade runner? Well, he's in the media again but in a bad light for a second time running. The South African athlete accused of murdering partner Reeva Steenkamp will have yet another alleged offence added to his existing woe. This most certainly is not good at all. The story goes thus,

Prosecutors in South Africa are to add two firearm charges to the indictment against Oscar Pistorius, who is due to be tried in March for murder and illegal possession of ammunition.

The athlete's lawyers received a letter advising them that the charges, would be added, Nathi Mncube, a spokesman for the national prosecuting authority, told Associated Press.

Mncube said the additional charges, believed to be related to recklessly firing guns in public, were not in the original indictment because they were alleged to have occurred in the Johannesburg region, a different court jurisdiction to the fatal shooting of Pistorius's partner, Reeva Steenkamp, in Pretoria, on 14 February.

Prosecutors had to seek permission from South Africa's new national director of public prosecutions to "centralise" all the charges, Mncube said, so they all could be heard in the same trial at the North Gauteng high court in Pretoria.

"The national director has indeed given them that authority and they will be added," he said. "They are not new charges, they were charges that already existed. They were just in a different jurisdiction."

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

Pistorius's spokeswoman, Anneliese Burgess, told AP that his family did not want to comment on the legal aspects of the case. His legal team did not immediately respond to phonecalls from AP.

The South African media has reported that Pistorius has twice shot a gun in a public place: one out of a moving car when he was driving with a former partner and another at a restaurant in Johannesburg when, he apparently accidentally fired a friend's gun under a table.

People who are believed to have been present during the two incidents were included in the prosecution's list of more than 100 witnesses when Pistorius was indicted in August.

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.

Pistorius denies murder and says he shot Steenkamp in self-defence through a toilet door with his licensed 9mm handgun, thinking mistakenly that she was a dangerous intruder in the couple's home. Prosecutors believe he intended to kill Steenkamp, possibly after a heated argument in the middle of the night.