Facts about Sirhan Sirhan

Sirhan Sirhan is 80 years old
Born: March 19, 1944
Birthplace: Palestine (now Israel)
Best known as: The man who shot Robert F. Kennedy

     

Sirhan Sirhan Biography

Name at birth: Sirhan Bishara Sirhan

At about 12:15 am on June 5, 1968, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan shot presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Kennedy, who was leaving a campaign rally, was mortally wounded and died the next day.

Kennedy’s death came just two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King by James Earl Ray. Sirhan Sirhan was an Arab who had emigrated to the United States in the 1950s and was reportedly disturbed by Kennedy’s pro-Israel positions.

After a 1969 trial lasting nearly four months, Sirhan was convicted and sentenced to death. That sentence was commuted to life in prison and Sirhan has been in prison in California ever since; his repeated applications for release have been denied.

Sirhan was granted parole by the state’s parole board in 2021, but Governor Gavin Newsome rejected the parole the next year, saying that Sirhan had “failed to address the deficiencies that led him to assassinate Senator Kennedy” and lacked “the insight that would prevent him from making the same types of dangerous decisions he made in the past.”

Extra credit

Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was not related to the Sirhan Sirhan accused of the deadly attack on an Israeli kibbutz in November of 2002; early reports that the two were related were in error… Robert Kennedy’s brother, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald… After Robert Kennedy’s death, the U.S. Secret Service began offering protection to presidential candidates as well as sitting presidents.


     

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