Sirhan Sirhan has been behind bars for the murder of Robert F. Kennedy for five decades. Now he also fails with his 17th plea for clemency due to a lack of insight. The 78-year-old would still pose a danger to the public.
The murderer of US politician Robert F. Kennedy is not released even after more than 50 years in prison. A parole board in California again rejected a possible parole for Palestinian man Sirhan Sirhan. The 78-year-old took part in the hearing on his 17th plea for clemency via video link from the San Diego prison, as reported by the "New York Times".
Sirhan's release was last promised in January 2022. But California's governor Gavin Newsom had spoken out against it, on the grounds that Sirhan, even after many years in prison, did not show the necessary insight that would prevent him from making further dangerous decisions. Sirhan shot Kennedy in Los Angeles in early June 1968 - just a few hours after he had won the primary elections in California to choose the Democratic US presidential nominee.
The US judiciary assumed that Kennedy's pro-Israel attitude was the motive of the then 24-year-old perpetrator. Barely five years earlier, Kennedy's brother, President John F. Kennedy, had been shot dead in Dallas (Texas). In 1969, Sirhan was sentenced to death, but after California suspended the death penalty in 1972, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
