Sirhan Sirhan
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan is a Palestinian-Jordanian man who was convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy Sr., a younger brother of American president John F. Kennedy and a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 1968 United States presidential election. On June 5, 1968, Sirhan shot and mortally wounded Robert Kennedy, who died the next day. The circumstances surrounding the attack, which took place five years after his brother's assassination, have led to numerous conspiracy theories. In 1989, Sirhan told British journalist David Frost: "My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 fighter jets to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians." Some scholars believe that the assassination was the first major incident of political violence in the United States stemming from the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, though it occurred at a time when the American public was overwhelmingly focused on the Vietnam War. On April 17, 1969, Sirhan was convicted of first-degree murder, among other charges, and subsequently sentenced to death by gas chamber. In 1972, this was commuted to a life sentence in the aftermath of People v. Anderson. He is incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego. On August 27, 2021, after 15 years of being denied parole by the local state board, Sirhan was granted parole by a two-person panel. Prosecutors declined to participate or to oppose his release under a policy by George Gascón, the Los Angeles County District Attorney. On January 13, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom blocked Sirhan's release on parole. He was denied parole again on March 1, 2023.
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