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Oscar Pistorius ( center) leaves the magistrates court in Pretoria, South Africa, Tuesday June 4, 2013.

Pretoria – The NPA has received notice that Oscar Pistorius’s lawyers will contest the court decision allowing the State to appeal his culpable homicide conviction.

“They’ve received the notice with the given date of March 13,” National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Velekhaya Mgobhozi said yesterday.

“The NPA will be in court on March 13.”

Pistorius’s family confirmed on Tuesday that the paralympian’s lawyers had applied for leave to appeal.

In December, Pistorius’s family said they would abide by the North Gauteng High Court’s decision. Judge Thokozile Masipa granted the State’s application to appeal Pistorius’s culpable homicide conviction, but dismissed its application to appeal his five-year jail sentence.

The State wants him to be convicted of the more serious charge of murder.

The Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein will deal with the matter at a date yet to be determined.

In October Masipa sentenced Pistorius to five years in jail for the culpable homicide of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

He shot her dead through the locked door of the toilet in his Pretoria home on Valentine’s Day 2013, apparently thinking she was an intruder.

The State filed papers in November calling for a heavier conviction and harsher sentence. – Sapa