Police raid Oscar Pistorius' prison cell

(South Africa) Oscar Pistorius had his cell searched in a dawn raid by prison officers suspicious of his friendship with an underworld figure.

A hard drive was seized from the paralympian’s cell and is being analysed by police, South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper reported.

The 28 year-old runner – who was jailed ten months ago for killing his girlfriend - was targeted by jail bosses after phones, SIM cards and memory sticks were found in the cell of gangster Radovan Krejcir, reports Dailymail.

Police Spokesman Solomon Makgale confirmed to the Sunday Times that Pistorius’ cell had been included in search.

'Other items were found on Oscar Pistorius. There is no evidence at this stage to link Pistorius to any criminality but we are still awaiting analysts’ reports about the contents of the items confiscated,’ he told the newspaper.

The double amputee and Krejcir – a Czech fugitive - struck up an unlikely friendship on the hospital wing of Kgosi Mampuru II jail in Pretoria where they were incarcerated as neighbours for six months, until Krejcir was moved in April.

An extraordinary video of the pair playing football in the prison’s bleak yard was taken by an inmate that revealed an easy familiarity between men, who were kept in virtual isolation from other prisoners.

Krejcir – who was last week convicted of attempted murder and drugs charges and still faces a slew of other police probes – admitted during a recent court appearance that he missed Pistorius and joked to reporters ‘we must play for Chelsea when we’re released’.

Anneliese Burgess, spokeswoman for the Pistorius family, said she had no knowledge of ‘the specifics’ of the search, but added, ‘there is no way that Oscar would do anything that is against prison regulations or be in possession of anything that had not been vetted by prison authorities’.

News of the swoop comes as Pistorius anxiously awaits a review of his parole. Under the terms of his five-year sentence for manslaughter, he was due to be released after serving one-sixth of it.

 He was scheduled to walk out of the sprawling facility in Pretoria ten days ago, but his transfer into house arrest was halted at the last minute after the justice minister ruled that prison authorities had been ‘premature’ in announcing his parole.

He will have to wait another three weeks to hear whether he can serve the remainder of his sentence in luxury at his uncle’s mansion nearby.

Pistorius was cleared of murdering Reeva Steenkamp, then 29, after shooting her four times through a locked lavatory door on Valentine’s Day 2013. He claimed his gun fired off accidentally after he mistook her for a burglar. Prosecutors are appealing his murder acquittal and an appeal will be heard in November.

News of the friendship between the shamed runner and the gangster was first revealed when Krejcir wrote a letter to prison authorities complaining that a treadmill and exercise bike – that he shared with Pistorius – had been removed from the corridor outside his cell.

Other inmates at Kgosi Mampuru – which is overcrowded and dominated by gang violence – have complained about the special treatment enjoyed by the men on the hospital wing.

The Daily Sun newspaper, which first published the film of the pair playing football, quoted a prisoner who claimed they were getting preferential treatment because they are both white.

'We are all in prison and we must be treated the same. The colour of your skin should not be a passport to get on the sweet side of the law,’ he told the paper.

Independent prison visitors, speaking to CNN, described how the double amputee paralympian had been given a new bed, a bath in his cell, gym equipment and offered the chance to prepare his own food after filing a raft of complaints to jail bosses.

Krejcir used a false passport to move to South Africa eight years ago and since then been linked to the unsolved murders of, among others, a luxury car exporter, the owner of a string of strip joints and a known drug dealer.