South African track star Oscar Pistorius was taken to a prison facility on Tuesday after he was sentenced to five years behind bars for fatally shooting his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp last year.

Pistorius, who is also known as the "Blade Runner," shot Steenkamp on Feb. 14, 2013. The Olympic champ pleaded not guilty to first degree murder, arguing that he shot her by mistake because he thought she was a home intruder.

In September, Judge Thokozile Masipa found him not guilty of first degree murder, but guilty of culpable homicide. She then sentenced the double-amputee runner to five years at Pretoria's Central Prison, which is notorious for being overcrowded and violent, according to NBC News. The prison was recently renamed the Kgosi Mampuru II Management Area.

Pistorius' defense team argued that prison would be unsuitable for the sports icon due to his disability, but Judge Masipa dismissed that claim, saying, "I have no doubt that, if prisons in this country were below the required standard, the ever-vigilant human rights bodies in this country would not hesitate to take the necessary steps to remedy the situation."

Under the law in South Africa, the disabled athlete is only required to serve 10 months in prison, or one-sixth of his sentence, before he can ask to be moved to community supervision instead or house arrest.

According to Nooshin Erfani-Ghadimi, project coordinator for the Johannesburg-based Wits Justice Project, a civil society group, Pistorius can expect to receive better treatment than the average prisoner.

"I don't think anyone with a disability necessarily will be able to be provided for at the moment in a way that ensures that they would have the correct medical treatment, that they have the correct physical structures," she told CNN.

Still, Ulrich Roux, director at Johannesburg law firm BDK, said "It is not meant to be a holiday camp. Oscar will undergo a medical check and then the authorities will decide if he should be housed in the general accommodation or in the area with single cells."