A South African court granted bail yesterday to Oscar Pistorius, charged with the murder of his girlfriend, after his lawyers argued the “Blade Runner” was too famous to pose a flight risk.

The decision by Magistrate Desmond Nair drew cheers from the athlete’s family and supporters, although he appeared unmoved. Pistorius had broken down in tears earlier in the week-long hearing.

The court set bail at 1 million rand ($113,000) and postponed the case until June 4.

Pistorius was ordered to hand over firearms and passports, avoid his home and all witnesses in the case, report to a police station twice a week and not to drink alcohol.

The decision followed a week of dramatic testimony about how the athlete shot dead Reeva Steen-kamp at his luxury home near Pretoria in the early hours of Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day.

Prosecutors said Pistorius, 26, committed premeditated murder when he fired four shots into a locked bathroom door, hitting his girlfriend cowering on the other side. Steenkamp, 29, suffered gunshot wounds to her head, hip and arm.

Pistorius’s defence team argued the killing was a tragic mistake, saying the athlete had mistaken Steenkamp for an intruder. They said he was too famous to pose a flight risk and deserved bail to prepare for a case that has drawn worldwide attention.

“He can never go anywhere unnoticed,” his lawyer Barry Roux told the court yesterday.

The 26-year-old’s lower legs were amputated in infancy and he has raced on carbon fibre blades.

The Olympic and Paralympic star faces life in prison if convicted of premeditated murder.

Prosecutors had portrayed him as a cold-blooded killer.

“You cannot put yourself in the deceased’s position. It must have been terrifying. It was not one shot. It was four shots,” prosecutor Gerrie Nel said yesterday.

In an affidavit read out in court, Pistorius said he had been “deeply in love” with Steenkamp, and Roux said his client had no motive for the killing.

In a magazine interview a week before her death, published yesterday, Steenkamp, a law graduate and model, spoke about her three-month-old relationship with Pistorius.

“I absolutely adore Oscar. I respect and admire him so much,” she told gossip magazine Heat.

“I don’t want anything to come in the way of his career.”